The Profit And Loss
by Garmonbozia
Summary: 12/13  -  Here at the edge, you can look down.  See just how far you've come, just how much you've gained.  How far you could fall.  How much you stand to lose.
1. Chapter 1

[A/N – When last we saw our heroes, or two of them at least, they were before a firing squad on a Justice Department space station was no idea how to get away. (And if that _wasn't_ the last time you saw our heroes, you missed the preview on the end of Minute. Hop back in time a couple of days and check it out.) A kind and benevolent author would jump right in here and tell you whether or not they survive, and how. I am not a kind and benevolent author.]

_3 DAYS EARLIER_

Earth, 1972. The dead days of the year between Christmas and another January. The shops are closed, or they're empty, and New York is under snow that slides away from the skyscrapers and piles shoulder-high wherever it can fit. The Tardis, apparently reluctant to go anywhere near it, tries parking herself on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, but I'm not having it. Lifts are electric, and the Silence might show up. That is far, _far_ too many stairs to even contemplate. Anyway, it's not my most favouritest building you lot ever threw up.

…Matter of fact you lot _didn't even_ now that I think about it. No. We're not staying here, much as Pond might love the view.

She repositions herself on the flat roof of a closed comic book shop just a little farther out of the centre with only two flights of fire escape between us and the alley below. Much better.

River is the first out the door and the first back in.

"This is the _fourth_ time you've managed to miss giving me Christmas in New York."

"Oh, River, count your blessings!" Pond cuts in. She's head and shoulders in the coat cupboard looking for something warm enough for outside. That cupboard could swallow her, you know. It's happened before. Not that I'm willing it to swallow her before she can go on and say what I know she's going to say. "He promised me Christmas in New York too. Not only did he come for me in _June_, River, but-"

"Really, Pond, _must_ we dredge up this old show _again_?"

"-It was the _seventeenth_ New York, River, and trust me, the sequels are no better than the original, and there was a plague of murderous alien Santas laying waste to everything. So you just look up and see your lucky stars all aligned, River, love, because it could be worse!"

Every time. Every Christmas, every New York, every minor miscalculation of potential fun, and she just _has_ to bring up the massacring Clauses… One saving grace; she actually _does_ fall into the coat cupboard before she can get out of it.

I have to cut in.

If I don't cut in she's going to go on to my second attempt to give her a New York Christmas. That one wasn't my fault, she was the one that got us thrown in the drunk tank full of fairies, and we're not going over that again. We're not reliving that vile, hellish night.

"_Pond_! Rory! This is 1972 and we have two extremely important tasks to complete. Now your daughter and I are going to handle one end of things but I need you for the other. I can rely on you, can't I?"

I've already explained to them, you see, the sheer scale of what we face here.

Well… I say _explained_. I may have skirted a few salient issues. Like the one about why the Silents got so irritated with human beings in the first place. And they didn't ask either. Is that what happened last time? I spoke and there were big holes and glaring inconsistencies and _nobody noticed_? They listen, yes, and they hear, and they understand and they obey but do they _think_?

I was always under the impression that they would tell me if I was wrong.

They're just standing there nodding. Awaiting orders. They the good soldiers and I the…

From the inside pocket of my jacket, I produce a slip of paper. "I need you to requisition the items on this list. Beg, steal or borrow, I don't care how you get it, but I need it all here this evening. Can I leave that with you?"

She says, "Absolutely, Doctor."

He says, "You can count on us."

She put that list away in her coat pocket and never even looked at it. I've worried about them before, yes, but not like this. I've worried about their lives and the lives of the people they care about, about what will happen to them when I am no longer a part of all that. I have worried about them pretty much constantly since Amelia was a little girl in a big house alone. But I've never really thought about the effect that I myself might have been having on them. I've never really noticed before on just how many occasions Pond has, to coin a phrase, slipped the note away without reading.

They leave and I watch them go.

Probably, I watch for quite a while after they go, because it's a shock when River lays a hand softly on my shoulder. "What's the matter?" she says. I break out a smile and spin to her, take her by the hand and twirl her once under my arm.

"Nothing whatever, darling. Now let's go dancing."

"But I thought we had a terribly important task to accomplish?"

"We do. Luckily we can also go dancing. You _might_ even get to hit somebody, River."

"Oh, sweetie," she sighs. Twirls back against me and mock-swoons backward over my arm. "I always knew you loved me really."

* * *

><p>Many long centuries before the glory days of the Maldovarium, and many years before the embarrassing experiment-slash-debacle that was the Blue Man Group, there was The Vinyl Lounge. Thirty square feet of downtown basement space, 310 cubic litres of smoke from all corners of the galaxy, undivided except by curtains of amber beads. Existing, day and night, in a permanent state of flux, from the Indian-inspired music on the stereos to the in-and-out stream of alien life forms arriving to kick back, knock off their perception filters for a bit and just unwind. It usually takes a bit longer than they're expecting, due to the fact that almost anything you order is liable to be at least half water.<p>

Except for Taremanians. A Taremanian will be three sheets to the wind after that much H2O.

"Should've told me we were coming here," River says. "I would've worn my kaftan."

"Not a chance. I want you wafting incense the rest of the trip." Reaching out, I ruffle her hair at the back, "Go on, get it good and stuck in there."

"Stop it," and she bats me off, but she's biting down hard on a smile. While she's on a high, at the bottom of the stairs I step behind her, take both her hands and wind her arms over her body, beginning to dance her across the floor. "What _is_ the matter with you?"

"Why? Am I wrong? Is this wrong?"

"It's _insane_."  
>"But is it wrong, River?"<p>

She thinks about that. With her eyes closed and her head tipped back against my shoulder, with the pressure of my leg guiding her every new step. Warmth and closeness and music from pipes that you can tell by the sound have a dozen inexplicable bulges in their bodies. Charmed like a snake she eventually sighs, "Probably not."

"You'd tell me, wouldn't you, River, if I was in the wrong? Question me, River, always question me. Always tell me, River, when I'm wrong, won't you?"

"Surely not always? You'd get bored hearing it. No, I couldn't possibly, my love. It'd affect your perpetual self-confidence."

She's joking. She thinks I'm joking, so she's replying in kind. That's alright. Just so long as she doesn't forget the joke. That way she'll realize. Understand. Come the time, it'll all make sense to her.

We groove up to the bar at her own pace, and I release one of River's hands only to fill it with peanuts from the little bowl and knock them back. Then bang on the bar, "Service!"

The bartender comes over. He's Cindici in appearance, which means we have roughly the same body mass, except that he's half my height and twice my width. Wherever he goes he drags a little step ladder with him so he can properly serve.

"What can I get you?"

"We'd like to speak to Dorium, please."

"Who's asking?"

"We are," River tells him. Leans back so that I lean back, so he can lean over the bar (albeit he has to give himself a little boost, feet leaving the top step), and see the gun on her hip. It's not even really a threat, it's just a part of the introduction. The bartender sighs and starts to climb down his ladder. "I'll talk to him."

"Many thanks," I say. As soon as he's below us, out of sight, River and I roll our eyes at each other and we follow.

He pushes through a double layer of bead curtain, which in the 1970s on Earth was the same as a door marked Private. Starts up that old conversation, Boss, there's some people here to see you, so on, so forth.

There's a low and much-less-upper-class-than-I've-been-led-to-expect drawl from within.

"Just tell 'em to chill _out_, man. I don't want to see anybody just now."

But they're not actually beyond a door, they're beyond a bead curtain, and it doesn't really make a difference that it's a double. I poke my head through. "Alright, Doriuoh my word…"

Before he was rich and decadent, Dorium Maldovar was a hippy. I knew this, but I knew it in a dim and distant way which, until this moment, was never real to me. Not until I saw him sprawled on a purple velour loveseat that rather clashes with his skin, thin as a rake and with a full head of glossy, black, shoulder-length hair, was it ever, ever real to me. Now I am trying not to laugh.

"How's things?" I manage, albeit at several octaves higher than normal and without breathing. This is what makes River finally choose to join me.

River does not have my restraint.

All Dorium does is sigh and loll about as though he'd _like_ to get up, but he just can't get _into_ it. "Who the _hell_ are you?"

"I'm the Doctor. In the future, you and I will be friends with an uneasy trust based on mutual understanding and favours owed. The hyena here is River. She'll be beating you senseless today while I ask questions. River?"

He sits up when she parks next to him on the couch. This is a mistake because it allows her to get an arm crooked around his neck.

"I'm not supposed to tell you this," she hisses in his ear, "But to my knowledge you will _never_ look this good again."

The bartender, by the way, has left. Without a word, without panicking, without stopping to check if we're going to kill him.

Oh, I tell a lie; he puts his head back through the beads and asks just precisely that question.

"Not if he's good," River purrs, braiding the front part of Dorium's hair. I've never seen him looking more terrified, but she's just bored.

The bartender, satisfied he'll still have a job at dinnertime, withdraws and leaves us to it.

I seat myself in an egg chair suspended between ceiling and floor on a chain. It turns gently with my weight. I need one of these. I need one of these on the Tardis. This thought momentarily distracts me, and River is still distracted by the fact that Dorium has hair. It is, ultimately, our hostage who clears his throat.

"Yes, right, sorry. Questions, battering." River's fist balls up above his head and comes down square on top of it. "No, love, not yet"

"Just letting him know what waits, sweetie."

"Of course, quite right. My mistake."

"What _would_ you do without me?"

"Spend a lot less and be a lot nicer about things."

She can't reach me, so she punches Dorium again. Then gets up from behind him and repositions herself so she can get a better swing on it next time. And when he tries to stand she plants her boot on the edge of the couch not millimetres from… well, it would be indelicate to say precisely, but you see what I'm getting at here.

"Dorium," I finally begin. "You know everything that's going on around here. You always have and you always will do, it's your own special talent. If we haven't met before now, then this is just the first of many times I will come to exploit this talent of yours. You have already been made aware of what will happen if you do not comply. Be comforted by the fact that our working relationship does not continue in the same pattern."

"Dude, I haven't got a clue what half of that just meant."

River swings in, grabs him by the luxuriant ebony locks and tugs him up to her, "Then listen better."

"The Silence. Heard of them yet?"

"Never," he says, or tries to. The end spirals off in a sharp, strangled cry as River tugs harder on his hair.

"No! Leave him; that's very possibly true."

"Oh. Sorry, my love."

"That's alright, pigeon," Dorium says. She slaps him because she wasn't addressing him to begin with.

"There's a race. Humans have been killing them off for years, great big massacres anywhere they appeared." Without ever actually letting go of him, River cuts her eyes at me. This is the first time she's hearing this part. That's why the Ponds have gone off with the shopping list. "They're getting ready to launch, leave this planet forever. A woman brought them the technology. Operation like that is bound to leave a mark. So tell me, Mr Maldovar, where do they intend to launch from?"

He's thinking about whether or not to answer. River would like very much to hit him again, but I shake my head. Give him a minute. It's cruel of me, I know, after I promised her. She needs a little vent every so often. An outlet. And it's my place as a good husband to provide for. It's not my fault she's a psychopath but…

Oh, wait… In light of what we now know, look at it again. Trace it back.

Yes, so I am _definitely_ justified in finding safety valves for all of River's latent ire and violence. That is a responsibility which I cannot, in good conscience, shirk.

By the time I'm done feeling better about myself, Dorium has realized he's not getting away until he talks.

"Listen, dude, you're talking about a real scary bunch of people here."

"I don't have much of a choice but to deal with them, so don't worry about that."

"I'm not, I'm worried about me."

"I like that," River sighs, smiling. "Gives you a sense of constancy."

"You don't die today, Dorium," I tell him. He's not convinced. River unholsters her gun and pushes it against his forehead, until he's forced to lie back. Relax. Chill out. "You _might_ die today, Dorium."

"Tunguska," he says, pretty quick now. "They're using the Tunguska wormhole."

Wonderful. What a nice compliant gentleman he is. I think I'll come back to him in his relative future and make use of his compliance again. River, however, does not seem quite so entirely satisfied. Matter of fact, she pushes a bit harder, until Dorium sinks down into the cushions, and then she cocks the gun.

"River? Darling? What are you doing now?"

"_Tunguska_!" she seethes, through gritted teeth. "Tunguska in _Siberia_, sweetie! It's never Tunguska in Barbados, or Maui, or anywhere I can wear a bikini, is it?"

She has a point. She's not _going about it_ the right way, but she does have a point. We could discuss her point, like adults, were it not for the strange and distracting black dot on the edge of my vision. Makes it very hard to put forward a cogent argument. It's very slightly wavering too, which makes it all the more difficult to ignore. As well as which, I suspect River's no longer listening. She's looking at me, yes, but very focused, and slightly below my face. "There's a little laser dot somewhere on my chest, isn't there?"

"Yes, my love."

I spin my egg chair towards the wall as the shot rings out. I feel the impact in the outer shell. Hear River scream and start shooting. Dorium scrambling behind the loveseat.

Thinking to myself, "It was all going so well."


	2. Chapter 2

You'd be surprised just how many rifle bullets the outer shell of an egg chair can stop, actually. I was. It protects me long enough for River's return fire to bring us into stalemate.

"Who is it?"

"Don't know, I can't make out through the beads."

"Honestly, Dorium," I sigh, "At least when you have a proper door they have to kick it in and show themselves." He's cowering behind his couch and doesn't hear me.

River is reloading, sheltering with me behind the chair, but the shell is weakened now. Another shot will break through and very possibly hurt. "At a guess? Two handguns and a rifle and there's a fourth out there making the decisions. It's all very standard, very put together."

"It's the government," Dorium mutters. "They found out about the aliens, man, they'll cart me off to Roswell and cut me all kinds of open."

"Then where's your back door?" River asks him. Again, he seems intent on taking his time, considering whether or not to tell us. The moment River's gun is ready again she aims directly at him. Emerald-generated laser would have no problem going through that. Or, for that matter, through the back of an egg chair. Dorium knows that, and he's about to speak.

Then, from beyond the beads, a soft, level American voice; "Doctors. My name is Captain Francesca Holly. I have a warrant for your arrest. Want to talk about it?"

"Ah. Justice Department."

River shifts her aim back to the beads. "Well, if you think about it, not an hour ago we kidnapped one of their most vulnerable agents and left them with a fixed space they never did want to begin with, all while I was escaping my decided sentence."

"They had the cowboys in, certainly."

"Yee-ha," she mutters, then lifts her voice, "Slide your weapons under the curtain."

"Lower yours."

River, being much better at this tawdry sort of spectacle, manages all the tension and exchange. I lean forward out of my chair to address Dorium. He feels safer now that the JD are here, and he's hanging over the top cushions. I mouth over, "Back. Door."

He hisses back, "You're sitting on it, dude."

Oh. Oh, well, that's quite clever. And has the potential to look even cleverer when I get it right in front of them all. I slip out the sonic and give River, who is waiting for it, the nod.

"Oh, alright," she sighs. "More the merrier."

It's quite good fun watching three grunts and a Teselecta try and get through a double layer of bead curtain. Whatever else happens today, we saw that. I can tell from her expression that River's thinking the same thing. Only Holly gets out of it with her hair unruffled. Of course that's due largely to her hair being just another part of her metal façade, but the effect is the same. This is a calm, in-control lady, even when she's not being a robot.

"Wait a minute..." I say, and try and make my chair turn back so I can get a decent look at her. Not happening. The harder I try, the farther I go the other way. I kick off the wall and turn right by her. "I _know_ you."

"Not an hour ago, I'd apprehended your wife and you temporarily overloaded my core hardware in order to escape."

"No, from before that."

"No, Doctor, we'd never met previously."

"Well, _later_, then. Honestly, Captain Holly, is grammar really the most important thing going on here? Or _Frankie_, isn't it? Don't I call you Frankie?"

"Which reminds me," she says, with perhaps the first hint of anything other than perfect Zen, "I've been authorized to use lethal force should either of you attempt escape again. I feel like I should tell you that now."

So apparently I don't call her Frankie just yet. River opens her mouth to start proper negotiations but I'm sorry, I am just _not_ finished. "No, but we _know_ each other, or we will. You wouldn't torture Jessica for me. That was good, good call, really helpful." River gives me a look that states, quite plainly, "We'll talk about that later."

The metal head whirs as it turns away. "I also feel like I should inform you an insanity plea will do _nothing_ but strengthen the existing case against you."

River sighs, exasperated. "So what exactly was it you _did_ think was up for discussion, Captain Holly?"

"Not much. Just whether or not you're going to come quietly."

"You can wish."

"Now, River, don't let's be hasty." I look past her to Holly, and with a gesture ask if I might take a moment with the lady wife. With a gesture she allows it, and with a gesture I graciously accept. River doesn't much like all this silent conversation going on around her. Nor does she like it when I reach out and pull her down to sit across my lap. She struggles, just a little bit, then remembers I've got the sonic in my other hand, and relaxes. "Captain Holly's just doing a job. And we should respect that. As well as which, she got us fair and square and this also is worthy of a little give-and-take on our part."

"Yes, sweetie but, and this is just a hypothetical, you understand, if for instance we were about to make another escape which Captain Holly had no way of stopping, would she then have to do just a bit more work to garner that same respect?"

"River, that sounds very fair indeed."

Holly, realizing what's happening, gives the order to, "Take them now."

A quick blast at the right frequency and the chain suspending this truly wonderful chair retracts into the ceiling, hauling us up. I hold River to me, mostly so she doesn't fall, but also because her added weight on one side turns us away from the new bullets into the wall.

A hatch in the ceiling opens and deposits us in a listening booth in a record store above The Vinyl Lounge. With River's gun still on the basement floor, we choose not to stand and fight but instead opt for Plan B.

That's still 'Run like blazes', by the way. Plan B will always be 'Run like blazes.'

River is just a half-step ahead of me. That's all, no more than a half-step, and that's just because I'm keeping an eye for anyone following at every corner. "So what do we do now?" I shout up to her.

Half-step, half-block… what's the odds, really?"

"How the hell should I know? Are they following?"

"I don't see them, no."

So she stops, folds back into a dark doorway and pulls me in after her. "Then we stop and figure out our next move."

"I put myself in your capable hands."

"Why do you keep fobbing this off on me?"

"Well, you've got much more experience in evading the authorities than I do."

"You must think I was born yesterday."

"For all I know, love, that's entirely possible."

"Hardly. The Silence were at Demon's Run, then, and you haven't even driven them back out of Stormcage yet, so-"

Things change. She says that and _everything_ changes. All the spark goes out of it, all the fun, because she says that. Because she says that, and she's already got her back to the wall, but I step closer and she has to press against it.

"How do you know that?"  
>"You told me."<p>

"Oh, I don't think I did."

"You did; you told me. What's the matter with you?" I look hard into her eyes, try and see something other than walls and deceptions, because those are always there and don't really mean much anymore. She looks right back too, defying me to find anything, but she's tired of that. I know she is. I'm tired of feeling it too, but she doesn't give me much choice sometimes.

I _want _to trust her. Truly. Scout's honour. But she makes it bloody difficult for me, sometimes.

After a while she begins to look as though she would very much like to punch me. That's why I flinch when one arm suddenly swings up, but it's alright, don't worry about me; she just throws it round my neck and pulls me in to kiss her. Which is very clever indeed; hard _not_ to trust somebody when that's going on.

Even cleverer is the fact that the Justice Department grunt who had been tracking us (he took his cap off, that's why I didn't notice him), just looks away and walks on by when he stumbles across a couple thus engaged in a New York doorway. Once he's past, River grabs my hand and pulls me back the other way.

"How'd you know he was coming?"

"You said we weren't being followed.

"Yes? So?"

"Good ninety-five percent chance we were being followed."

"…I hate you."

"No, sweetie, you really don't."

"So what now?"

"Now we loop back to the Tardis, find my parents and hit Tunguska before Dorium spills everything to Captain Holly. _Speaking of whom_-"

"Let's talk about that later."

"No, sweetie, I want to talk about it _now_."

"And I don't want to talk about it ever. And I don't intend to." I'm not being cruel, I'm being honest. Managing her expectations as regards us ever, ever discussing the early days of my relationship with Jessica Apple, back when she was still a Little Ghost. "So let's just say 'later' and then we can all pretend to be civil about it."

River, being mostly unfamiliar with honesty, mistakes it all for cruelty and stops walking. Turns, plants one hand in the middle of my chest and shoves me, hard. "Alright, I wasn't going to say anything, didn't want to panic you, but we _do_ have a further problem, as it happens."

"You mean beyond the arrest warrants and the imminent trip to Siberia?"

"Look at your hand."

Tally marks. Three of them, on the back of my wrist. Three might generally be a manageable, even magic number, but one is too many to see today.

Back to the Tardis, then, and quickly.

* * *

><p>The Ponds, all credit to them, have apparently filled out my little order list and already returned. I mean, it takes <em>finding<em> them off my To Do list, but it brings with it a whole raft of other problems. For instance, the moment I cross the threshold, Pond is toe to toe with me, and poking quite sharply at the place on my chest which is still sore from her daughter's applications. "Why is it I get the feeling you were _distracting_ us today?"

And she points straight out behind her, to where Rory, rather liking the look of himself, is obliviously posing in his new white disco suit.

I hold out a hand. River fishes in her pocket and finds a ten dollar bill to put into it.

Pond goes on. "Oh, it was a bet. Well, why aren't I surprised? What about the lava lamp, Doctor? And the records?"

"Well, the lamp is for _you_, Pond, you did say you'd always wanted one. And hold on to those records, they'll be worth a fortune when we get back to your time."

She tips her chin up, challenging me. "The Rubik's cube?"

"Yes, where did you _get_ that? It's not invented for another two years."

"I won't lie to you, it _wasn't easy_. And the mirror ball, well, I can only presume that's set-dressing for _this_ idiot!"

This time, Rory notices that we're back. And he doesn't even look embarrassed. Rather, he swaggers over. Apparently that's what white suits do to the human male. Who'd have thought?

"No, Pond, we do actually need that one, keep that safe."

Rory's not listening. You can see in his eyes, we're all supposed to be listening to him.

I never meant to create my own monsters. I'm getting disturbingly good at it.

"So, Doctor? I take it you need me to go undercover? Hit the clubs, lean on some snitches, that kind of thing."

"Not quite, Rory. What I do need you to do, is stand very still for just a moment and, if you wouldn't mind, one of those Night Fever poses would do very well again. Wonderful. And hold. River?" She steps in, takes the photograph, steps out again in the same moment he sees what we've done and all but collapses. "Awfully sorry. She told me she wasn't leaving New York without that picture and it _really_ is imperative that we get a move on."

He shakes, wraps his arms around himself, redoes those top three buttons of his black silk shirt. I've taken him at the height of his manliness and turned him back into Rory. I know. I'm a cad. In muttered, kicked-puppy tones, he whines to me, "I'm going to kill you."

"You, Rory? Surely not. _River_, maybe, when I tell her to set a course for Siberia, 1908."

"Possible, my love. Very possible…"


	3. Chapter 3

We land, and Pond is already by the doors.

"So what time of year is it this time?"

"June 30th," I tell her.

"Oh, good."

She flings the door open, and immediately slams it shut again as a blast of icy wind slices right through her. She retreats, teeth chattering. "It is also, Pond, if you'd let me finish, midnight in Siberia."

"I'm going to kill you," she clatters.

"You too? Quite the little lynch mob you're all turning into. It's midnight. Established time would have us believe that the Silence leave forever at about quarter past seven this morning. Seven hours should be plenty of time to find and stop them."

Rory's got his confused face on. Whatever he says, I resolve to be kind. He hasn't spoken since River took her little picture. "But I thought the Silence left in the seventies?"

"They decided to, yes. You forget, Rory, they already had time engines. We're at Tunguska, on the only day in _history_ that anything ever happened at Tunguska. Large, unexplained explosion up in the air, big enough to take out a large town. Massive blast of cosmic energy which, properly harnessed, would be capable of blasting just about _anything_ into space."

"So they've come back to take advantage of somebody else's explosion using somebody else's technology?"

"Well," I say to him, "they _think_ they have."

"Classic bloody Silence," he mutters.

They've seen the moon landing too, now that I think about it. They've seen that and more, and done it in the presence of Silents. There were Silents everywhere when I told them about the unique technology sharing operation they had going on as a species. Post-hypnotic suggestion?

Best hope not.

But it's hard to hold out hope when, even after all that's happened already today, I find them both looking up at me again. Determined. And Rory says, "Well? What are we waiting for?"

"River. She went to change… Into some kind of Arctic Rambo, apparently…" She's just walked in, you see. Armed to the teeth and wearing the correct fatigues for an escapade in the icy tundra. "Where did you even find all that?"

"Oh, I have a stash."

"What?"

She shrugs, "Some women leave a toothbrush and a change of underwear… We need to go before Holly catches up."

"Oh, yes, Ponds, if you see anything pretty and blonde in a Justice Department uniform, just start running, I'll catch up."

* * *

><p>The Silence aren't hard to find. The exact location of the Tunguska event was logged years upon relative years ago. I denied their suspicions about the cause of it then, and I'm denying them now. Great tear in the sky, flames and thunder, that's just not my style at all, I told them, and that still stands. We stop at the ridge over the river, getting a look at the future crater without being spotted. River has her scanner out, checking the ground in all directions.<p>

"There's a whole system of perception filters up," she says. "It must be a ship they're hiding; the area is massive."

"Can you get a look through?"

She shakes her head. "Afraid not. Anywhere I might block one there are another twelve to hold me out."

"Well, what about underground?" Pond tries bravely.

"Just their usual tunnels, but _hiving_. Every surviving Silent on Earth must be down there. This is it, they've got their bags packed and they're going."

No, not if I have anything to do with it. Mun Jones wouldn't let me interfere with them signing up with Kovarian, and that's fair enough, but nothing says they have to make it out of the stratosphere. The calibrations for taking advantage of something so immensely powerful as the Tunguska explosion must be precise to the nanometre. If even one calculation were a fraction of a digit out, if even a single 7 was mistaken for a drunkenly-leaning 1, it could well be curtains for the remnants of the race, and any human compatriot that may or may not be travelling with them.

Of course, that's not my plan. That would be genocide, and I don't do that anymore.

I'm just saying, if Plan B were ever to change from 'Run like blazes', today might be the day. I'm just saying it's always nice to have a fallback. I'm not saying that's the plan; I'm just saying that I've thought of it.

"River, where's the nearest surface entrance?"

"East, back the way we came."

"Ponds, take the scanner back to the Tardis. Attach it to the yellowy-pink cable at the psychic interface, she'll know what to do with it. We'll need you to guide us; it's just like the heist." Pond reacts. Doesn't like that. Pond still doesn't make eye contact and we're all doing our best to ignore it. Tonight, I'm not even acknowledging it. For one there's no time and for another it'll do her good to get back on the horse. She's not getting a choice. We don't have that luxury. "Somewhere in the next six and a half hours would be wonderful; we're losing time." Still nobody moves. "_Pond_!" She shakes, snaps to attention. Stares at me wordlessly. "It's fate-of-the-earth time. Wake up!"

It takes a little coaxing from Rory, who glares at me like I'm not doing the right thing, but doesn't question it either. Eventually, they go.

"Was that really necessary?"

Ah, finally. A question. I turn to River, and decide to see how far she's willing to take it. "Yes?"

She eyes me, like she _might_ push. Then relents and turns. "East then."

So I must have been in the right, mustn't I? Otherwise River wouldn't let me get away with it. Would she?

We trek another mile or more across marshy summer grass, scant on top of the permafrost, and eventually she stops. "This is it, we're here."

"We're where?" See? I ask questions. When I'm not sure about something I'm not afraid to poke at it. "I don't see a hatch."

River pulls out another of her seemingly endless arsenal of future antique sidearms and fires, apparently randomly, into the ground. Blast after blast disappears while I protest, before one strikes home with a clank. "Sounds to be about a metre down." Before I can so much as accept this, she's on her knees, widening the bullet hole with her arm until she disappears up to the wrist, then halfway up her forearm.

"What are you doing? My _God_, what's _that_?"  
>It's a grenade. I didn't really need to ask her that, that was just my immediate reaction. River just opened her coat and pulled out a <em>grenade<em>, and from the way the coat now hangs it would appear to have brothers and sisters and it's a _grenade_.

"I told you," she says, "I have a stash." She keeps grenades on my Tardis. That's not normal, is it? I mean, even by our standards, is that normal? Is that ever normal? Keeping _grenades_ around, as though she were a soldier! I mean, really, what – "Ears!" – else is she keeping in there? Nuclear warheads?

But it's gone off now, I suppose, so what's the point in complaining.

The hatch won't open right away, and we race, like cowboys in a quick draw contest, me for the sonic and she for another grenade.

"River, take your hand out of there at once, this is _not_ the time."

"_Ohmygod…_" Ah. The Ponds have made it back to the Tardis, and Amy's plugged in to the psychic interface. River and I hear her voice as though she were still standing here. "_Is this right? Am I doing this right?" _

"You're fine," I tell her.

River fills in, "He was only talking about my coat, Mum."

"_Oh. Of course._" Psychic subtext: _Oh, thank God_…

Adjusting the settings for this particular lock, I meanwhile explain, "Amy, ask the Tardis to check for life-signs directly beneath us."

"_Ask_ it?"

"Yes. Just ask."

I roll my eyes and River laughs, listening to her try to phrase it. At least she's polite, but I can tell her from here that the old girl definitely has a minute and isn't likely to mind helping out.

"You're clear for ten metres," she replies, eventually, sounding deeply surprised to have learned anything at all. "Both directions."

We're only going one way. To the heart of the filter field, to the hidden ship. All we have to do is make them miss the explosion. There's no way to correct it without interfering in their own timeline. But we've never been quite so deep in enemy territory, River and I, or at least not on our own.

"We're not on our own," she says. Bloody psychic interface. "Are we, Mummy?"

"Amelia, you hold us in the palm of your hand."

And all of a sudden the line goes dead. There's nothing and _now_ we are alone. If we weren't, the Tardis would have told Amy and Amy would have told us that there was a cluster of Silents around the corner moving in the same direction we want to, and we would have known before we did it that there would be one on the other side of the door we ducked through.

The sonic holds it off and River… disables it. I can say no more than that, because I'm not entirely certain _what_ she's done, only that it is no longer moving.

Only then is she free to panic about her mother. Not for long, though. There's a distinct shift, like a change in air-pressure, that means the connection is reopening. "Pond?"

"Yes, but not the one you mean."

"_Mr_ Pond."

"Spot on."

"Daddy? What happened to Mum?"

"I'm taking over. There's a crowd of them on the corridor outside, you're going to need to double back. Right out the door, then the second left."

River reaches for the door handle, but I hold her back a moment. "Answer her, Rory."

"…She's fine. Look, you need to get around that corner or you'll end up trapped between two lots."

River moves forward again and again I hold her back. This time she fights, this time she wants to give me an argument, and I hesitate long enough for her to do it, but she doesn't. "_Answer her_!"

Another shift, a second hand on the pad. "Look, I'm still here, alright? I'm fine."

"Well, _stay_ there, then. So we know."

River pulls her shoulder out from under my hand and storms out the door. I follow. We make it cleanly out of harm's way and, aside from stops and directions, nobody speaks again until we're all but there.

What holds us back is a scanner on the wall, showing the surface, where a dozen or more human workers are making the final adjustments to the craft. River and I, as one, breathe in a long, comprehending, "Oh…"

The Ponds, as one, "What?"

"Oh, you wouldn't get it," I say.

River adds, "Just the design of the ship."

The ship is essentially a great metal hoop, loaded up with little pods to be loaded up with Silents. The centre of the hoop is entirely empty, but each pod has legs that extend down into what will, tomorrow morning, be mistaken for the crater left by the Tunguska event, where they all join up in a central hub. The one we're about to step into. It is this hub which is equipped with the necessaries to transform a massive, uncontrolled explosion into a single propulsive blast, like a funnel.

"River, they've put this together in the last, what, five days?"

"I know. I feel a bit…"

"Sick?"

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"…Psychic interface. Rory, tell her we need the collection transformer room."

He tells us to hide first. Things are getting busier. But thankfully, all the checks down here have been done and redone. You don't leave these things until the last minute, in case something _is_ wrong. Anyway, the collection transformer is a standard bit of kit. It's nothing that needs calculated and calibrated. So long as the couplings are still coupled, you can be fairly certain it's working. And trust me, when I'm done with it, the couplings will still be coupled.

"Saboteur Number One?" I say to River

"Yes, Saboteur Number Two?"

"_Le sabot_, if you'd be so kind."

"Certainly."

From an outside pocket, far from her grenades and _whatever_ else she's got in there, she produces the fist-sized mirrorball her parents acquired for us back in 1972.

At the far end of the line, both the Ponds are silent.

"You…" Rory manages eventually, "You're serious, aren't you?"

I can't answer. I've got a very important mirrorball in both hands and the sonic between my teeth. River, on the other hand, is only giving me a leg up, and she takes her turn at explaining "The collection transformer works by concentrating energy, like sunlight though a magnifying glass. The mirrorball works by _dispersing_ energy." I sonic open the access hatch and, by looping its little string hanger over the lowest lens, hang the mirrorball from the concentration matrix. Then sonic it closed again and hop down from River's hands. She's still looking up, lopsidedly smiling.

"Love it, sweetie. Love _everything_ about it."

That's nice. That's gratifying. I hold onto that for comfort when I become acutely aware of another presence in the doorway behind us.

"Who the _hell_ are you?" a voice demands to know. Familiar and not, all at once. River and I turn, very slowly. The Ponds are in a tumult wondering where the voice sprung from. But it's not a Silent, you see. The Tardis was only scanning for Silents. It's a person, a woman, and the moment River claps eyes on her, her breath catches and she says to me, "Is that…?"  
>"Yeah."<p>

The young Anna Kovarian, who I really should have been _waiting_ for, she claps eyes on me and gasps just the same way. "You're…?" she begins, but can't finish.

"…Yeah."


	4. Chapter 4

"River," I announce, "Plan B."

But she doesn't. Run like blazes, I mean. Of all the times to turn independent… She hesitates a moment, until she's absolutely sure Kovarian isn't moving. Locked staring at me. Then she walks up to her. Because Kovarian won't look away from me, River paces around her, hissing, "Oh, stare away, love, I know he's impressive. But just bear this in mind for later. The first time you see me, you won't know me-"

"_River_…" But she's not listening. Flicks her eyes up to me, daring me to warn her off again. I take the hint.

"-but know, Kovarian, that you need to _fear_ me. Twice as much as him, Kovarian, fear _me_."

She's edging towards rage, towards violence, so as she comes to Kovarian's other side I reach out and pull her towards me instead. "Not today."

As I watch, something happens to Kovarian's expression. The shocked stare drops away, turns inward for a moment. When it comes back, it's cold, ready for me. _Respectful_, almost, in a way I've never seen from her before. She hates me, yes, she's terrified, fine, but she concedes.

"Leave."

That's all she says. One word. "Leave." And then she walks straight past me, gives herself a boost on one of the couplings and goes about undoing what I just did. She even laughs a little, when she figures out what the mirrorball is for. "We can stand here all day and fight about this, but this part of the ship is going to be blown off when we launch. I certainly don't intend to be here."

River, utterly baffled, is looking at me. And I, much the same, am looking back at her. "That's it?" she says. "Just 'leave'?"

"No more than that?" I add. "You're not going to… tie us to some railway tracks or anything?"

She climbs back down, mirrorball in hand. Actually pauses and studies it. "No. Only leave." Beautifully, introspectively, "I'm not ready for you yet. And I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I could kill you here and now."

"No," says River, armed, stepping half across me. "Too right."

Kovarian almost smiles. The first traces of that reptilian grimace that will all too soon become all too fixed there, but purer, unhardened. "Well, exactly. My only goal today is to see this ship launched. And if I have to be down here and blown to bits to make that happen, then so be it. You, Doctor, can wait. And will wait." This last she speaks with the weight of heartbreak, of genuine loss, still raw and not yet turned bitter, "And someday very, very soon, I will be the death of you."

"Well," I tell her, "You're half-right. River? Let's go."

River follows me out of the room. Neither she nor I have a notion _why _she does this, because she plainly doesn't want to, but she follows.

A few feet beyond the door, she turns, mouth open to ask me something. But her father beats her to it.

"_What_," Rory spits, "The _hell_ was _that_?"  
>"Respect, Rory. I showed respect, you're always on at me to do that more, that was what that was, was me, showing respect."<p>

"_I didn't mean to Madame Kovarian_."

"But it wasn't, though, was it?" This from River, sounding distant and stunned, looking to me for eye contact, for confirmation. "Not yet, anyway. So what now, my love? Where else can we head them off?"

"Whatever could you possibly mean, River? I was respectful. I did as she asked and left. I didn't say for a moment that I was letting this ship go anywhere. That stash of yours, by the way. How is it for explosives?"

* * *

><p>River led us to her "stash", eventually. She seemed wary. I should probably have kept my intention to clear it out someday to myself.<p>

The alert amongst you will have noticed the quotation marks around the word, "stash". That's her term.

I prefer 'bunker'.

And I tell you something, the Tardis and I are going to have words about this, because there's no way River could have hidden this from me without her help. She's been _stockpiling_, apparently, since we first met. Or last met. Or… You know what I mean. She's been bringing weapons and explosives and heavens knows what else _into my home, without my knowledge, _for _years_. I could be executed on about a thousand different planets for carrying a _tenth_ of this stuff, not to mention she could have blown us all to kingdom come.

Just because she got me to stop saying this out loud, in the end, doesn't mean I'm not still _reeling_.

Frankly, I blame the parents. One of them's getting déjà vu off the historical stuff and the other one is toying blithely with about enough Jupiter mercury to take out… well, Jupiter and Mercury. I take it off her and place it carefully back in its holder.

"Forty-four spokes supporting the transport ring, River, and they only need to be damaged. If we break them it'll fall and they'll know."

"You're no fun."

"Can you _do_ it? In this veritable cash-and-carry of wholesale destruction, do we have those kinds of subtle capabilities?"

"Oh, sweetie, I run the whole gamut. I go from nuclear wasteland creation to single molecule poisons."

"As much psychiatric help as you may be pleading for right now, do try to focus on the question at hand."

On her knees, she sits back from shoulder-deep in a steel gun cage and, terseness betraying her stress, tells me, "I can do it; I just can't lay hands on them. Why are you looking to _blow_ things up anyway? Not your style, I'd have thought."

Rory opens his mouth. I shake my head. Rory closes his mouth again.

"It's the human approach, River, I'm testing it out."

Disappearing back into the cupboard, "Human approach, my love?"  
>"'If you can't beat it, beat the living hell out of it.'" A halberd narrowly misses my head as Rory endures a rather painful flashback to the Wars of the Roses. My point exactly. "Time is <em>short<em>, River."

"And the closer we leave it the less chance we have of them being able to do anything about it."

"There's a fine line between timing it right and the army being raised against us escaping into the depths of the universe."

"Aha!" She emerges, dragging with her a long, low, blast-proof chest. Throws it open on rank upon rank of little silver eggs. "You'll like this, my love, they're sonic. A single sharp blast of subsonic sound at the same frequency as the vibration of any substance they're placed in contact with."

"No reaction until the Tunguska energy actually hits and changes the frequency. River!" I grab her so I can kiss her forehead, "You're brilliant!"

"…You say that like you've only just noticed."

"Ponds! We're going back to the launch site and this time you're coming. Grab eleven of these little blighters and… Ponds? Ponds!"

Roman short sword. They must have laid hands on it at the same time and they've gone into the same trance. They dream about things that didn't happen anymore, but they dream as one, and all things are real when they are shared. Part of me doesn't want to interrupt. Part of me knows it's painful for them.

Most of me is aware that we have about three hours left and nobody but me even seems to be taking this seriously.

* * *

><p>We started north, south, east and west respectively and we're working clockwise. It's all going swimmingly.<p>

There was a whole part of this story about slipping past the perception filters, and a very clever thing I did that helped to disguise us so that we could move freely amongst the guards, turning the filters inward so that River's little bombs would look like they belong, but what's the point in telling it? What difference does it make? Here we are and we're nearly finished. In five minutes we'll walk away and at 07:17, an unidentified object explodes over Tunguska and _absolutely nothing else happens_. The Silence retreat, Kovarian loses her army, humanity lives on in peace.

I win.

I win.

In two and a half hours, as the sun rises over Siberia in 1908, nobody dies and I win.

I place the last of eleven little egg bombs and that's it. That's all there is to it, _all she wrote_, the end, _fin_, full stop, terminus, I, ladies and gentlemen, win.

Endless, Madame Kovarian said. Endless and bitter. Well, I'm awfully sorry, love but I've had a much, much better idea. Let me run it by you – startless and blithe. How's that for an improvement? And yes, I've still been there and _yes_, I have suffered, but no more. And do you know what, I can leave it here. I can pack up my troubles in my old blue box and smile, smile, smile all the way to the _far_ side of the universe, which is where I am going to get away from this, because _I. Win._

It is as I stand from placing that last egg that I hear the whir of the manipulator, the cli-clack of the handgun cocked and ready.

It's not fair.

"Oh, don't tell me. Let me guess before I turn around. Captain Francesca Holly."

"Ten points."

"How many points do I need for you to come back in a couple of hours?"

"Hell of a lot more than ten." She has the handcuffs on before I even know I've moved my arms. She then allows me to turn. Around the ring, on my left, River is in the same position, and shrugs at me. Holly whirs as she shakes her metal head, "You just can't stay out of things, can you?"

"Frankie, live nine-hundred years and tell me how you get along with staying out of things."

"Not something you're going to have to worry about much longer, Doctor."

I _would_ ask her what exactly she means by that, but a few of her grunts are shouting for the Captain, wanting to know what to do with the Williamses. "You have no warrant for them," I remind her, very quickly, very strongly, "And they're not involved. They're just pawns, really, sheep, they do whatever I tell them. That's the only reason they're here. They're only human, Frankie; you can't blame them. I don't wish to threaten you at all, but I will point out, you know how River and I can fight you when we want to."

She looks at me. I know she's just a person in a control room studying me on the scanners, but this must be an advanced model. I feel very much as though something is looking back at me from out of her eyes. Eventually, "Release them. We take only what we came for."

I nod to her. Graciously. Showing respect. I say nothing because I'm afraid of what might happen if I open my mouth to her. The guard holding River, he's called George. Holly calls him over and he comes, with River in tow.

"What's the plan, sweetie?"

"Softly-softly, for now." I try not to let her see how it kills me to say that. They have begun, already, the process of removing the sonic devices from the spokes of the Silence's propulsion transport. I just want to be carted off to prison before I have to watch the whole thing.

I don't win now. It's not fair, I won, and now I don't win.

"If you don't mind my saying," River balks, "it's not the best plan you've ever had."

"We go quietly and your parents don't have to go."

"Oh…"

Holly instructs George to escort River and I, both of us meek, model prisoners, to a safe distance from the craft. She'll be along in just a second. There is, however, no law against me walking backward, so River guides me along by the handcuffs and I watch.

From a hatch at the centre of everything comes Anna Kovarian. And yes, Pond has a good shout at her before she is restrained, that's my girl, but other than that, things are decidedly subdued.

"I wanted to thank you, Captain Holly. This means more to me than-"

"Hey," Frankie says. That old American gesture, the stop-sign hand pulled sharply across the body, is rendered ridiculous by being mechanical, "I don't like what you're doing here anymore than he does. But the fact is, Madame Kovarian, you're a fixed point today and I don't have a choice. So don't thank me. Just get back in your ship and take yourself out of here, okay?"

I lean my head back onto River's shoulder. "There might be hope for us yet, dear."

She shrugs, "Somebody will think of something." She shrugged and I rolled in, completely due to gravity and none of my own design, against her neck, the smallest possible kiss so they won't separate us. It's important, though. She can walk away from this no easier than I can, and the only reason she's not currently kicking and screaming and throwing grenades is because I asked her to.

Kovarian watches us go. The heartfelt, bittersweet smile. Not yet shrivelled and bitter like it will be, like she'll wear when she watches us fall a dozen other times.

We'll be alright though.

Somebody will think of something.


	5. Chapter 5

I had such hopes for Frankie Holly. She even let me use George's radio to speak to the Ponds. Lest they try something new and different and not be sitting safely in the Tardis when the actual Tunguska blast happens. You know what they're like; don't tell me it wouldn't have happened.

But the look in her eyes when I told them we'd be returning for them right and soon. Like I'd physically threatened her, like we might literally need to climb over her blackened corpse to do anything of the sort and she doesn't put it past us. Who does she think we are? From the way they cart us off under maximum security, despite the fact we told her we're coming quietly, we're the galaxy's most wanted.

From the next electrified cell along, a faceless voice, "You see, sweetie? _Consequences_. You get Captain Carter fired and the bloody Terminator takes over."

"Stop it, River. Frankie's got a job to do. Don't you, Frankie?"

"…I still have one of my grenades, you know. They didn't find it when they searched me."

"Oh, lord, River, do I even want to ask?"

"Yes, my love, you do, but wait 'til later."

"Well, I wouldn't pull the pin anyway. Containment field, River, it'll fall at your feet."

"You can, however," Holly cuts in, "Take it out and place it on the floor at the edge of the cell, Doctor Song."

"Well, Captain, you asked for it. If George and the boys could just spin round, please."

Everybody's at her end. Nobody sees me with my head in my hands and my eyes closed, just listening as even the unflappable Captain Holly shifts foot to foot, whirring and clanking, and breathes, "My God…" It is at this point that I feel it my duty to go to the edge of the cell and apologize. It's not that I'm trying to see down the hall. That's not it, that's not what happens at all. The fact that I got the stubble burnt off my cheek by the electrical field is entirely unrelated.

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be anything to apologize for. Holly has the apparently undamaged grenade in her hand, turning it over, studying it, and 'My God' would seem to have been trigged by the item, not it's origin. "Is that… This is Falkland, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, but it was fresh just yesterday, so it's hardly an antique yet."

Just yesterday. Just yesterday she was bringing Falklands War grenades into my home beneath my notice. It's worse than having a _teenager_. And now she's discussing the correct release grip with the Teselecta Captain who just stole victory from us. They're discussing the additional safety clip in the model which replaced this particular… _breed_ of hand grenade, and how in an open environment with no danger of the pin catching, it really just wastes time for the thrower.

Captain Holly majored in the History of Warfare. River wrote part of her doctorate thesis on the reluctant evolution of human weaponry, the perpetual improvement on a flawed design. Which is a bit of a blow, considering I thought it was about me. Captain Holly knows. She studied it. They launch, from there, into a long discussion of the imperfect anatomy of the handgun.

I can offer no commentary on this, because the only words I know are the ones that I physically hear with my ears. Other than that, not a clue.

George slides up to my cell, looks warily side to side, and then asks, "Have you been following the chess?"

"George!" Holly snaps. "Don't talk to the prisoners. You know better than that." Then turns back to River with the grenade and says, "Can I keep this?"

I will spare you the details and tell you only that it is a long, long morning until the Justice Department clears them to land us, and that I learn more than I ever, ever wanted to about projectile weapons.

But the moment they do receive clearance, Captain Holly becomes the consummate professional again, except for the unauthorized grenade hanging from her belt.

Half the JD has turned out to watch our apprehension. This is apparently a bit of a party day for them. Though I do hear one bitter little voice mutter, "There goes the overtime."

"Mun's cupboard is around her somewhere," River muses. "Mun could save us."

Without turning, without addressing us, without adorning the blunt fact in any way, Holly says, "Agent Jones will find his signal blocked across this entire sector until the Department are completely finished with you both." She wants to say more. Even through the robotic interference, you can hear that she wants to say more.

River catches my eye, thinking exactly the same thing, and before either of us can help ourselves, "Oo-oo-ooh."

She stops us and turns. "You don't even _want_ my help, do you?"

"_Can_ you help?" River asks, with frank new interest.

"Not really."

"Then I'd say we'll be alright."

"Oh yeah," I add. "We'll think of something."

"Fine. The Lord Chief Justice himself is waiting to speak to you."

Oh great. L.C. Little man, big office. Big stetson. Big boots. Big pair of old earth steer horns mounted on the wall. River runs her eyes over all these things. Opens her mouth to comment. I shake my head. She rolsl her eyes and closes her mouth again.

I try to see as little of the Little Big Chief as I possibly can. Now here's twice in twenty-four hours.

"Honestly, milard, if you were so desperate to see us again-"

"Leave it at the door, Doctor. Ain't no room in my presence for attitude."

I look to River. "Since when is everyone at the Justice Department American?"

"Think over the last three words of that question and then tell me if you still need to ask."

I do as she says. "Oh. Quite." Then, natural and relaxed, we take our seats at L.C.'s desk. He stays standing, probably enjoying being taller than us for once, looking mildly bemused. I should probably pay more attention to that expression. I don't, though, I go on regardless. "So? What is it this time? What have we done?"

"How do y'all feel about maybe eighteen counts of interference and as many as I can be bothered counting out of reckless endangerment? How 'bout genocide?"

River pouts, hangs her head in a mockery of shame and contrition, "Well, I feel just awful, sir, I truly do."

"And how do y'all plead?"

I linger a moment. Because I can't really argue with anything he just put before us, when you think about it, and if I'm honest, he's missing a few charges and – "Not guilty," River says, very quickly. "Both of us."

The Lord Chief Justice laughs. "So I'll just get them to tag 'perjury' on the end of that list, will I?"

Man and wife, in perfect chorus, "Why not?"

"Then let's get down to sentencing then. You'll both be executed first thing tomorrow."

Now he sits down. To fill out the paperwork, probably.

Man and wife, in perfect chorus, "…Beg pardon?"

"We could probably do prison," River continues. "Don't worry, sweetie, maximum security's alright. You'll like prison."

"What about corporal punishment?" I try, when L.C. doesn't so much as lift his head. "We could do that. Go on, corporally punish her. We'll sell you the rights, you'll make a fortune."

_"Doctor_!"

"I'm bargaining for our lives, love; all's fair."

"This is illegal!" she cries. Slams her fist down hard on the desk and stands up at the same time, so it looks like the force flung her to her feet. "What about due process? Jury of one's peers! The Geneva Convention!"

"Think of the Constitution, man!" I add, trying the same move. I see now why she did it. It hurts one's hand, which makes one angry, which makes one sound much scarier. Or, pained.

"Rights of Prisoners Act, 3249!"

"3250, River."

"_Pedant_."

L.C. lifts his eyes, but not his head. They peer up dark and glittering from under the brim of his hat. "What about Protocol Twelve?"

The one about sole responsibility falling to him should control of one or more correctional facilities be lost. Stormcage. River sits down. Me, I'm not ready to give up, just yet. I stay on my feet.

"And Protocol Forty-Seven?"

The one about the Bishop and the actress.

I sit down.

It's not far from there to the cells.

"Why couldn't you just hold on to that grenade?"

"You were the one who got perjury added on!"  
>"<em>Somehow<em> I don't think perjury is the key charge, River!"

Sighing from opposite sets of bars, we both relax back to our pallet beds. That's as much as an argument as we're going to have, I think, the day before we're due to be killed.

"So," she says, "tell me a story, while we're both sitting here."

"Once upon a time there was a distinctly mediocre young actress called Cleo…"

I swear, I'm just trying to think of something. I'm not still awake in the dead of night because I'm concerned or anything like that. I'm just up working the final kinks out of the plan. Promise. Scout's honour.

I hear the door at the end of the hall open and go to the bars to look.

Frankie Holly.

And I don't mean a big robot pretending to be Frankie Holly with Frankie Holly and lots of little assistants inside. She'd like me to think that. She's going to great lengths to move like a Teselecta, for my benefit. But she doesn't clank, and she doesn't whir, and I don't honestly think they've worked out those little design flaws since dinnertime. No, this is Frankie. She's out and unminiaturised and headed straight for me.

"What can I do for you, Captain?"  
>She doesn't reply right away. She looks over at River first, and makes sure she's asleep.<p>

"Doctor," she says, soft and fast, "I can't save your wife. But you can walk away from this. All you have to do is tell them you'll come over to this side. You and the Tardis; they'd kill for that."

"What, work for the Justice Department? No thanks, Frankie."

"This is the _best_ I can do for you."

"And I appreciate it. I will take it into consideration and, in due course, dismiss the idea many, many more times before morning."

Not thinking about acting the robot, she runs a hand through her hair. This time her hair moves. "Yeah. Figured you'd say that." She turns, headed back the way she came. "It was an honour to arrest you."

"And a privilege to evade you as long as we did."

I sit back down. Consider her idea, and dismiss it. For one, River would _haunt_ me. For another I'd never forgive myself.

Besides, that would be like giving up.

That would be like saying I couldn't think of anything.


	6. Chapter 6

I may have already related to you the events of the following morning. In short, River and I both must have fallen asleep and neither of us has thought of anything. Holly and ten friends have loaded and checked their rifles, and River and I are about to die with only the smouldering butt of a cigarette to commemorate us.

"There is a tiny, tiny chance," River says, with admirable restraint, "That one or the other of us will somehow survive this. If it is you, I will _haunt_ you to your dying breath." Told you so. "If it's me, I'm going to throw a party on your grave and invite everybody from Silurians to Cybermen to have a little dance. I just want that to be understood here and now."

"Yes, love."

"And don't you _dare_ regenerate when I can't."

"Whatever love wants."

Oh, my God, this is it. This is not the planned ending, I can tell you that much. Much less fire and glory than the planned ending. I have things to do. Who's going to stop Kovarian? Somebody needs to tell her I'm dead but how can you do that? How can you do that to a woman with nothing else to live for? I can't be dead, the repercussions would be immense. What about the Tardis? Oh, poor old girl, sitting out in Siberia with the Ponds aboard, just waiting to be stolen by anybody with the brains to put it together, oh, no, this… this can't be the actual, _actual_ end, can it?

Holly gives the order for them to raise their rifles. River's cuffed hands slide across and wind into mine. And we may have turned down the blindfolds but I, and I could care less what River's doing, I am closing my bloody eyes, because I can't watch this.

Holly gives the order to take aim, for rifles ready.

I open _one_ eye. Just to watch her raise her arm, just so I know when they're going to fire.

This can't actually be the actual, _actual_ end of it all, can it? I mean, _actually_.

Apparently not.

The rifleman on Holly's immediate left cries out and claps a hand to his neck. Moments later, he falls away in a dead faint.

A couple of muzzles drop. A few more waver as the holders cast their eyes sideways.

"Forbes?" Holly snaps. "What the hell, Forbes, get up."

Something hits the side of her neck, but she's metal, and it drops away with a tock. Holly kneels to pick it up, raises it to her scanner eyes to study it. During all of this, the man on her immediate right falls the same way.

"Darts! Eyes up, boys, over the wall." But she keeps her own handgun on River and I. "You think of something, I take it?"

I shake my head, turn to River. "Wasn't me. You think of something?"

"Nothing you would have approved of, sweetie"

"No, Frankie, wasn't us."

We're being rescued! It's quite a nice feeling, actually, all adrenaline and all. My life as a Pond, I could get used to this, you know.

But my assertion that we are absolutely not responsible for this is rather undermined by the swift approach, barrelling across eons of space, of my Tardis.

"Who the hell is flying my box?"

"Gift horses, Doctor," River grimaces, "_Mouths_."

"But who the _hell_ trying to fly the Tardis badly? It's not your parents, they wouldn't have a clue where to begin, and-"

But it's reached us now, spun up and stopped just a bit too far along to shield us from Holly. The door is flung open, and River grabs me, drags me behind as she makes a break for it.

Captain Holly fires. Misses. And trust me, it takes more skill for her to miss both of us than it would for her to hit.

Because of the handcuffs, we fall through the doorway. Someone else slams it closed for us. The Tardis takes off again, but stops a moment later in midair. Just as I'm getting back to my feet again, the door is opened for somebody else.

Somebody running along the narrow top of the firing wall, with bullets ricocheting around their feet. Running directly towards me and very, very quickly. Somebody wearing a steely blue flashback to another featureless blank mask. I don't mean to be childish, but it leaves me utterly paralysed, and as it comes to the end of the wall it _leaps_ and it's not fair. I was being _rescued_ and now it's going to kill me dead in both my hearts, oh, God, no, it's not fair.

It doesn't kill me.

Its arms don't go through my chest, but around it. It holds so tightly to me that its little shoulders hunch and its head is buried against me, cold hard mask and all. Bit sore, actually, bit of a crushing effect, but I haven't the heart to back off.

"Doctor am being heretimes safe."

Oh. So that's Jessica. That was Jessica blowing darts from the top of the wall.

And there's Rory, helping River up from the floor.

And that was Pond on door duty, doing the opening and slamming.

Right, okay, I'm almost all caught up.

"Pond, hug Jessica, would you?"

She doesn't. She takes River's arm from Rory, and it's Rory who peels Jessica off me. "Just until he gets the handcuffs off," he explains, gently.

"No, actually. Well, yes, that too, but the _first thing_ I intend to do, Pondicus, is turn around very quickly and catch whatever imposter is currently at the controls of _my Tardis!"_

And I do so. Exactly like I said, I turn around very quickly.

The person at the console makes no effort to even hide himself. Doesn't even have the good graces to look ashamed. Then again, he never did have much of that. There are worse imposters to find on the eve of war than a former Time Agent, I suppose.

"Jack, if the first words out of your mouth are some form of flirtation, I warn you, I'm not in the mood."  
>He smiles. In <em>roughly<em> the same instant, I feel River step up to my shoulder. Yeah, it's definitely Jack. "I was _going_ to say 'hello'."  
>"Yes, I suspected as much. I'm married now; we can't do that anymore."<p>

"I heard." Controls set, he climbs down from them. As he approaches, River actually crouches, stepping over her handcuffs, so that she has a hand to offer him when he gets to her. And he _takes_ it. "You must be Riversing."

Acutely aware that my hands are still tied behind my back, "Oh, then, you're acquainted with Jessica. It's Song, actually, River Song."

"Sing is fine," River says quickly. "Whatever works for you. Darling, why do I never meet any of your friends until we're practically dead?"

Amy, graciously, begins to pick the lock on my handcuffs and Jessica, whether she knows what she's doing or not, puts herself between Jack and River so she can explain. I really am going to hug her when I'm free. "Captainjack am to have been bringing progygrill-" Jack breaks out in a sudden grin, barely suppressed laughter. "Her am continues says it wrong?"

"Kinda. It's _prod-i-gal_, Jessica."

"Proddygirl. Am to have been bringing proddygirl back to Tardis."

"Yeah," Jack sighs, "There's a whole part of that story involving kidnapping that she just _never_ seems to remember."

"Not forgets, just not says to Doctor."

They argue about that, probably. He's not flirting with River so long as he's arguing with Jessica, so I don't care.

Neither am I listening; the handcuffs click and fall away. First I turn to Pond, and I practice hugging on somebody who isn't going to accidentally break one of my ribs. "How are you?" I say in her ear.

"I'm okay."

She's not, but I won't push right now. "I'm sorry. I never meant to leave you out in the cold. Quite literally. How was Tunguska?"

"We didn't see it. By the time we got back to the Tardis, Jack and Jessica were already here." Which is a pity. That would have been nice; to have won with the Silence, and then returned to two lost friends appearing anew in my life. That would have constituted a bloody good 30th June. Still, 'saved from death and two lost friends appearing anew in my life', that's not too bad either.

It is also round about the point where she mentions his name that I notice; Pond may be hugging me, but she's looking over my shoulder at Mr Lantern Jaw over there. So when River calls me back, and I have to let go of her, I make sure and hand her directly to Rory. Just as a little reminder for her. I know what's going through her mind and I'm not sure how Rory would feel about that.

"Doctor," River calls again, "Come and say thank you."

"What's wrong with the tongue in your head?"  
>"Absolutely nothing. Do keep me from using it, sweetie." She's being facetious. She thinks this is a joke. That's understandable, she doesn't know him yet.<p>

"A blithe," I announce, "and utterly platonic thank you to Jack and Jessica and the able assistance of the Ponds, from the bottoms of all four of our still-beating hearts. You there, skinny, take that silly mask off and come and hug me properly."

Jessica doesn't move. She hangs her head, and I let my waiting arms fall back down again. She reaches up and tugs the new mask to show it doesn't go anywhere. Latched on, around her neck and in both directions round her head.

Jack says, "We tried everything."

"But the Doctor with the Sonic am to be fixing it heretimes."

That's not a question. She knows that, in her heart. She's been waiting for this. This is her reward. One problem. I'm not the Doctor with the Sonic. I'm the Doctor who got the Sonic taken off him while he was still in Siberia.

And while her head is down, I spot a line of blue ash running over her shoulder and down towards her ribs. A scar. Jessica doesn't scar, though; she got stabbed in the stomach and gave up chronocytological material and none of it scarred her. So _what_ they must have done to her that only the ash is holding that shoulder together, it makes me very angry.

"We'll get you sorted," I promise her.

She nods, accepts. And very probably underneath the mask she makes some brave attempt at a smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes. It never does. That's where sad smiles come from; eyes don't lie when you look closely enough. And they're all I can see. I've disappointed her. She hugs me anyway, but only briefly, and then slips away when she thinks nobody's looking to that little room at the top of the stairs.

Because there is nothing I can do for now, I turn instead to Jack. While it's going about, I hug him and all. Differently, though, lest he get any ideas. Firm, masculine, pat on the back type hugging. "I'm glad you're here."

"Yeah, well, I started out shanghaied, but the more Jessica said, it started to sound like you needed me."

"Did she really kidnap you?"  
>"At sword-point. Which did seem a little archaic, until I figured out that was her arm."<p>

"You see, River? Somebody _always_ thinks of something."

"_Please_! You were _terrified._"

"But ultimately vindicated."

"Oh, invincible you."

"You're still here and all, dear."

Most things are fine. River and I are still alive. Jack and Jessica are here, so that's a bit of back-up for whatever lies ahead. The Ponds, so far as I can tell, are in a good place. Now that Jessica's known to be safe, Pond herself should be alright, shouldn't she? Now all I need is the sonic back and a new plan. And we may need to lay low for a while, what with the fact that we just annoyed the entire Justice Department. Again.

Just a little while, though.

"Right! Everybody get dressed. River and I never did get our last meal."

"Bloody trade bans," she mutters. "They were just saying that, you know. Last time I saw the banned substance list, pepperoni and mushroom did not feature."

"Wait," Rory says, charging up like it's a problem which is going to impact massively on his life, "Are you saying they don't have pizza in the fifty-third century?"

His expression is the same mix of outrage, shock and disbelief that painted itself over Tom Monaghan's face when I told him. He refused to come with me because of this same great slight. I tell Rory this with understanding and pride in him.

"Who's Tom Monaghan?" he asks. Always has to check before he takes a compliment. That's a character flaw, you know.

"Let's go and find out. He owes me a night's shelter anyway."


	7. Chapter 7

"We just had dinner with Mr Domino's," Pond says, as though she still can't quite believe it. I wouldn't mind, only it's still just one little campus restaurant called Dominik's and we had to pass her off as a student from the university to explain to Tom Monaghan why a Scottish girl tried to kiss his pinkie-ring the moment she realized who he was. "It's a pity they haven't got Ben and Jerry's yet though. I'm not impressed."

"Pond, Ben and Jerry haven't met yet."

"So when does that happen? Can we go there?"

"It's an idea," Jack adds, between belches. "Might get Jessica out of her room."

She wouldn't come out with her 'ash face' on. And we didn't bring her back any pizza because none of us could figure out how she'd get it under the mask to eat it. It seemed cruel. She's holding the fort anyway. Somebody had to stay on the Tardis and listen out for warnings from the Justice Department. Who knows; if Jack's here, the Agency could be involved now too.

"I don't know what you're always complaining about," I say to him and River. "I've never been on the run before-" Pause for scoffing, noises of disbelief, profanity, "And it's working out very nicely for me."

"Oh, Rory," Pond smiles, and it's nice to see that happening again, "We're in _such_ bad company."

"Said the Special Agent to the Last Centurion," River finishes, and we laugh, all of us. Remember what I said about not lying low for very long? What if I've changed my mind? What if we lay low for ages? Just stay on the run and have adventures? We've missed our shot at the Silence now anyway, they're off world and there's nothing we can do about it. Might as well just…

No?

Not an option? Irresponsible, you say? Well, if the clog fits…

This, at least, now, is good. Or it is, anyway, until just as we're round the corner. That nasty, niggling feeling, above and below and around everything, but in itself ungraspable. Message on the psychic paper. And a heartfelt one, a chaotic one, one born out of someone's real fear and apprehension.

'Person here.'

"Everybody stop; don't go round that corner." The Tardis is right there, in the parking lot at the back. I don't know what's waiting, who might be standing there prepared for us. "It's Jessica," I explain, now that they're looking at the paper. "She says she's not alone. Is anybody armed?"

River, Jack and Rory each raise a hand. Pond slaps Rory's chest, looking thoroughly shocked. "I went back to the stash," he mutters, at which his daughter slaps him on the other side. "Sorry."

"What's the message say exactly?" River asks, leaning over my shoulder to read. "'Person', singular."

"Not to cause any offence to her or her…" eyeing Jack and Rory, "_Defenders_, but this is Jessica we're talking about."

"She's probably _handling_ it," Jack adds. Nonetheless, he does have a gun in his hand and I'm grateful for that. "Mr Domino's interrupted me before I could get to the part of the kidnapping story where she _handled_ two alligators."

"Oh yeah," Pond says, distant with memory, "She's good at alligators."

"I know, she showed me her bracelet."

Rory peels Pond's hand from around his arm and stands straight, brave. "Stop talking. Whether it's one or a hundred, Jessica's on her own in there."

"That's amazing," Jack says, a disbelieving little shake of the head. I can't help but ask him what he means. "You just keep _finding_ them. Y'know, like… _good _people. Not just normal people but, like… _good_. Or you've got a factory someplace…" But this, he says as he's leaning around with his back to the corner, checking that the coast is clear. And as he waves River and Rory around after him he goes on. "Seriously. You're like a magnet for nice guys. This is why I don't hang around with you anymore."

"You just can't bear that I don't notice you."

Pond and I follow behind these three very capable, very _good_ souls at our own pace. Not that we're not worried, just that we don't need to be. You know, this could be worse. There's a stranger in the Tardis, at least one of them, but there is unspeakable comfort in being surrounded by friends who step so readily to the plate. I can face the unknown assailant feeling calm and certain of myself. I'm right. I must be. They all believe.

I have _one_ little wobble, when I reach for the sonic and the sonic isn't there.

But the criminal is unlocking the door, and the centurion is bursting it in, and the soldier is leading the charge inside, where the former assassin probably isn't _too_ panicked herself. Who could worry?

And I _definitely_ don't worry when I see that absolutely nothing happened, and that there is nobody in the console room than I did not expect to be there.

Jessica, with a long stake on her left arm, is pacing beneath the glass floor, circling the coolant pipes like a threatened animal. As she once so memorably proved, that's very much the weak point in the engine.

With Rory, River and Jack watching the entrances, I send Pond up to the console and go to Jessica. "What is it, what's the matter?"

Muffled behind the mask, "Person here. Am being person here. Saw it."

"Man, woman or Tall?"

"Notwoman."

"Man then."

"_No_, not listens. Her… Doctor, not knows. Sees her and was woman, but her runs away and… am not to be smelling anyperson. Not knows."

Because the pacing is making me dizzy, and because I think I know what's going on, I take her by the shoulders and hold her still, then shout up to Pond for her findings.

"Tardis reads six life-signs," she calls back. "That's us, Doctor."

Which confirms everything I had previously thought. "Stand down everybody."

Jack, par for the course, is last to lower his weapon. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," I tell him.

Jessica's mask rattles she shakes her head so hard. "No. No, but _saw_. And her am not having left," banging her chest with her free hand, "Am having made that sure, Jessica am done that for him."

"And I understand that," I say, and I try very hard not to aggravate her in any way. Turning her by the shoulders, I start to guide her towards the stairs. "And I appreciate that, Jessica. You've done very well. We'll take it from here."

A step ahead of me, she turns. Not angry, not afraid. The same eyes that looked out at me earlier. I've let her down somehow. "Not believes her…"

"Oh, it's not as bad as all that." I try turning her again, try to get her to carry on ahead of me, but she just stands there, staring. "You've had a rough time of it, Jessica, and you were on your own and-"

"-And saw woman in Tardis."

It's difficult to find a way to put this to her. I could try explaining about PTSD, about the effects of her recent time with the Silence on her reactions, but would she understand? In her mind she knows what she saw. But after a brief stalemate, she saves me the trouble. Storms off by herself. Halfway to her room she changes her mind and storms back again, raising that dangerous left arm. I don't exactly pull back, but I'm _ready_ to.

Thankfully, she doesn't intend to run me through. She takes the stake in her right hand and snaps it off. Shoves it against my chest until I take it from her. Plain as day, without a word, 'Defend _yourself_, then.'

River, who had been patrolling up on the gallery, watches her charge again, and this time she slams the door behind her. "Sure about this, sweetie?"

"Pond, if you'd just confirm what you saw before for your daughter."

"Six life signs," she says quietly.

"You, me, your parents, Jack and Jessica. Makes six."

The argument doesn't get a chance to blossom. It gets lost in Rory moving me out of the way on the stairs to go to her. That's for the best. He's probably not thinking in exactly these terms, but medical help could be just the thing for her right now. As I return to the console, so does Jack.

He says, "What happened to her?"

Pond promptly disappears. So there goes everything that was going well with her. She was _smiling_ again, and now, apparently, that's over. Frankly an unhinged girl with a pointy skeleton and a victim complex is the very last thing I needed tonight. "I was having such a nice night…"

"Did you miss the question or are you ignoring it?"

Americans. Americans can never just let you have a moan; they don't understand it like the British do. And I don't really want to go through the whole terrible story right now, not to mention that I know no more than he does about what's happened to Jessica since the heist. There's another Riversing out there who can fill that particular gap, but I don't really know where to look for her and come to think of it, what do I know, tonight, really? Hell of a lot less than I did this morning, I'll tell you that much…

"You aware you said all that out loud?"

No. Thought that was internal monologue. I'm not used to having Jack around. "Sorry."

"The hell did I walk into?"

I sit down and, somehow, begin to laugh. Jack, after a moment, takes a seat and joins me. It's hysteria, but not the same kind that took River and I happily to our almost-deaths. A different kind altogether, and it almost hurts. "Listen, you brought Jessica back. We're all grateful, none more so than she is. But you're under no obligation to stay, Jack."

He rolls his eyes, shakes his head. "_Come_ on."

"I'm _so_ glad you said that." I say it far too quickly and he laughs at me. "It's not even funny, Jack, it's just-"

Again, I don't get to say quite what I wanted to. After all the swift exits only moments ago, a hand reaches up through the railings and seems intent on taking me down through them, grabs the back of my jacket and pulls. Before I can even try to turn my head, River's voice hisses in my ear.

"Riddle me this, my love. What has no scent and no life-sign and looks just exactly like a woman?"

River makes me go and apologize to Jessica before I'm allowed to see the prisoner. During the whole process she tells me no fewer than four times that it took her under three minutes to locate and apprehend the intruder whose existence I denied.

Those are her exact words, by the way. On all four occasions. She does _that_ much rubbing in.

By the way, what has no scent or life-sign and looks just exactly like a woman?

A Teselecta pretending to be one.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that, given recent circumstances, I should have gotten that. And you're right, because I'm thinking that too, if I'm honest. But it was so much easier, wasn't it? And I _am_ worried about Jessica. We haven't had much opportunity to talk about what she might have been through and I don't know how it's affecting her. That's all it was.

Really.

I believe that.

By the time I'm back from making a suitable apology, River and Jack have Francesca Holly by either arm, and have brought her to the console room. Pond is at a safe distance, Rory and Jessica on the gallery above. In short she's restrained and surrounded. I'm still a lot more comfortable than I usually am around people who manage to break into the Tardis.

As soon as I open my mouth, River's going to say something else snide about the intruder I said wasn't real. Everything I address to Captain Holly, she's going to say, 'Who are you talking to?' I'm putting off the whole horrible business when Pond gets us started.

"I recognize you. You arrested my daughter this morning. And we rescued her, so I can safely say she hadn't done anything."

River coughs and has a quiet word in her ear. Holly, if she was Holly and not a robot, would probably laugh. I'm glad she doesn't because that would make me angrier than I already am.

What she says instead, unfortunately, still does that.

"Yeah, I arrested her. And I lost her again, and I'm _this_ close to losing my job over. Seriously. They told me when I took the Teselecta that you people were a curse, but did I listen?"

"So what?" I begin. "You thought you'd come and _re-arrest_ us? In our own home, surrounded by our friends, at least two of which at any given time are morally ambiguous and perpetually armed? I'm actually up to _three_ at the moment or… wait, Rory?"

"Oh, I've still got mine, Doctor."

"Make four, Captain Holly. So sit yourself down and put a pair of handcuffs on, there's a good girl. Jessica's not in a good place tonight and she's starting to look a bit antsy on it."

Jack keeps hold of her while River goes for the cuffs. Of course she does. If anybody's ever going to be able to pick up a pair of handcuffs without taking more than three steps, it will always be my wife. The classic joke would be to say that's why I married her, but to be honest this isn't even something I want to joke about. This is a thing which disturbs me to my core.

"Wait!" Holly says, and I'm almost grateful. "Look at me, Doctor, I'm here, this is me. After your wife found me I had the crew shift the machine out, this is just me." Just to be sure, I reach over and pinch her arm. "Was that really necessary?"

"For such a small slight, it made me feel a lot better. Jessica?"

She hesitates. Maybe catching on to this human notion of not-talking-to-people. Then, "Am having person-smell now."

To Holly, "Continue."

"My inside pocket. Why I didn't leave with the machine. But they'll be coming back with reinforcements, so you have to get out of here."

I nod to River, "Check it."

She leans in, then stops. "If this is the pin of my grenade-"

"I have more respect for antiques."

River reaches in, very carefully indeed. But it's nothing lethal she removes. No, quite the opposite, in fact, when it's well taken care off and responsibly used. My screwdriver It takes a good ninety-percent of everything I have not to outright giggle as I accept it back. Once it's in my hands, I take a moment just to appreciate the fact that it's back. Then, "Right. _Now_ sit down and put the handcuffs on." While they manage that I ask her, "Why did you bring this back?"

"Gosh, Doctor, I got it into my head it's something you use all the time and you might kind of need it." I meet lots of people and don't know what side they're on. Few ever put me so entirely on the spot. "Listen to me, you need to get your Tardis out of here, with me or without me. You're going to have half the department landing on your head in _minutes_."

Well, that clears things up a bit, I suppose. There's that, and there is one even more important thing to deal with. That will do for now, and Frankie afterward.

"River, Jack, get us out of here, Pond, don't take your eyes off Frankie, and Jessica! The Doctor with the Sonic really am _very_ sorry indeed."


	8. Chapter 8

The Silence didn't want Jessica to have a face. That's how she puts it. She had a voice and a pair of ears she never had the first time round, so they took her face. Now that she knew the mask was no longer for her protection, they turned it against her. But that's as much as she tells me. It's as much as I know how to ask and she doesn't volunteer anymore. That's what I thought was going to happen when she told Roryperson to go and see where River landed us. She's going to tell me everything without me having to push. So I keep quiet, and I keep working at the soldered hinge at the back of her head

But that's not what Jessica wants.

"What about Keeperkey?" she says instead. What about it, my dear? I'd almost forgotten about it. I had almost filed it away under Unamusing Interludes That Nearly Ruined My Life, and that's a big file, Jessica, it could get lost in there, and I could almost have been happy again. "Her am sent that back to him with Roryperson, made that sure."

'Making sure' must be her latest scrap of English. Picked up from Jack, perhaps. I take the little black fob out of my jacket pocket. I don't like even to touch it. It lies in the palm of my hand and Jessica knows she's not about to get the answer she was hoping for. How can I lie to her when she made this traitorous little thing sure?

"I'm sorry, Jessica. There… It wasn't what I thought it was." No notable reaction, except that the hinge starts to pop, but that's more to do with the sonic than the infokey. "I meant to throw it away…"

"_No_!" she snaps. Suddenly the hinge isn't important. She twists around and snatches the key from my hand. "Not throws out. Jessica keeps if him am to be throwing out." And there's really no point in even arguing. Before I can even ask why, she has it strung on the chain around her neck, where she used to keep the transmat discs.

"If it means that much to you, magpie, certainly."

"What am magpie being?"

I make my explanation last until the mask falls away. I don't see her face. It's raw from being trapped so long and she immediately snatches up a pillow to hide it. My whole ornithological spiel, she boils down fast and accurate. "Magpie am being black and white thief bird, bad luck." Then nods to herself. "Jessica am being like magpie much. Can be possible talking to Amypond now?"

I tell her I'll send her up, but she wants them to be able to go out somewhere. Wants real air on her face. That's why she sent Roryperson to check on our location and she's very annoyed at him for forgetting about her. I won't explain why he thought she just wanted him to go. I think I'll enjoy the fallout of that one from a distance. With her hair in her face and her hood pulled tight over, Jessica follows me downstairs. Rory watches, with what I may be misinterpreting as a touch of jealousy, when Jack gets to her first.

"Well, isn't that a pretty face to have hidden? Or… y'know, when the sores heal over…"

"Captainjack am to be lesstalking now."

"Right."

River and Rory do better, but the one person she's really interested in stays determinedly on the far side of the console. And yes, it's very important that we keep an eye on the local waves for any Justice Department activity (at least until we've cleared up this silly execution order and I don't have one of them handcuffed to a chair), but anybody could manage that. And Pond hasn't said a word just yet. Jessica's making for her in an equally determined straight line, and Pond tightens with every step she takes. Jessica suddenly stops and Amy sighs. Tries to slip away, but I meet her at the bottom of the steps and steer her back.

Whatever she's scared of, I can disprove it.

What Jessica stopped for, was Frankie Holly. The woman who broke in, who scared her so and left her patrolling the console room alone, the one she nearly thought she was going mad over. And she wears such a bright, untempered smile as I can't quite describe to you. Whatever Amy is afraid of, this isn't the girl.

Holly and Jessica talk. I don't hear what they say. Jessica's smiling and Holly is confused, but that's par for the course. Holly hasn't had a chance to get used to her yet.

"You don't understand, Doctor," Pond breathes. Barely breathes. Her shoulders are shaking and, for a moment, I have a terrible feeling I'm about to hear something new from her. That I'm not getting the answer I wanted. "You don't get it, she'll tear me apart."

She fights to get away, but I hold her in place. "_So_ melodramatic. See now where River gets it from…"

"River lives with _you_," she snaps back, "Nature or nurture, Doctor, you've been around long enough to answer that. Stop it, she's coming over, no, _seriously_, Doctor, let me go now, _please_."

"_Jessica_! Found her for you."

"I _hate_ you…"  
>"No you don't."<p>

As polite as her boredom will allow, "Talks to _Amypond_ now, Doctor." Now that there's nowhere Amypond can run, that's just fine. I let go of her and move just far enough away to be decent. But I still want to hear, of course.

You'd have been blind, deaf and thick not to suspect that there was more to Amy's version of how the heist went wrong than she said. Until now I didn't see the point in pursuing it. There have been larger stars turning supernova, if you'll pardon the old cliché. I have _earned_ eavesdropping rights, putting up with her.

"Amypond am thinking her am angry, but not. Not heretimes. Beforetimes, _really_ angry. But Riversing am telling her all right things and her understands. Amypond was to be thinking of Riversing and Rory. Am not heretimes angry. But Amypond am to be doing a thing for Jessica and trusts it, heretimes."

Pond, whether trying to keep up or not believing her luck, stands for a moment looking utterly stunned. Then swallows whatever it is that so paralyses her and nods, "Absolutely."

"Face hurts. Wants goes outside."

Well, this is no fun at all. No drama. Completely boring. A moment of understanding passes between them and nobody is attacked, nothing happens. An event occurs and is endured and passes without… event.

Isn't it _wonderful_?

Pond lifts up her voice, "River, what's outside the doors?" (Supercilious little sniping, "Roryperson am to have been asking that.")

Before she even speaks, River laughs right out at her own answer, "Tetanus for all! Some scrapyard. Shoreditch somewhere. Tardis picked it, but I'm rather pleased. If they _do_ send us back that Teselecta, I'll leave it where it belongs."

"Not the most glamorous place for a walk," Pond shrugs at Jessica.

"Jessicaface am not being glammy-… glamra-"

No, but it can blush, and at these new stumbles she's content just to leave. They go, with Pond discreetly helping her sound out the word. Rory has taken over watching the local energy scans for any potential arrivals. Jack is showing Frankie his arsenal and for once I do mean his weaponry. All quiet, all _normal_. It really is _truly_ wonderful.

I'm almost loath to ruin it all.

I slide up to River at the console. "What _have_ you been saying to that girl? And why do you know about what happened at the heist and I don't?"

"No idea what you're talking about, sweetie."

"Not going to work, she said herself."

She shrugs, "Wasn't me."

"Why are you lying when I know for a fact that you-?"  
>"How could it be me? I'm the River you threw out after Soul, remember? I haven't been back to them yet."<br>"_Aha_!" Note to self: when seeking to avoid the word 'spoilers', ask _around_ the question. "But you know that that's going to happen; you have foreknowledge, now _where_, River, where in all of creation did you get that kind of foreknowledge?"

I want her to answer. I'm waiting for her to answer. And she's holding off, holds off just long enough for a low, confused voice to echo up in the quiet –

"Okay, somebody made a mistake." This from Frankie. And much as I hate her for interrupting when I had River on the spot for once in my life, it's an odd enough comment that it stops us all. We look at her for explanation, each and every, bu Frankie is looking back with the same expression. She's got that face on which means there's something we've all missed, and I _hate_ that face. "What did you think they were executing you for, what did they say?"

Me, I've hidden the whole traumatic debacle away in the back of my mind. I could stop and think about it, but I don't need to. River rattles it off like she gets an execution order every couple of weeks. Which, come to think of it… " – And _perjury_."

"Why are you looking at me, dear? You told the lie."

"But that's not…" Holly shakes her head. "No, this is wrong. My arrest warrant was based off the fact that you two have been crossing timestreams like you're making friendship bracelets. If I was still in the machine, I'd show it to you."

I look to River, "Well, we know you've been doing a _bit_ but-"

"This is _all_ wrong," Holly interrupts. "I'm talking about thirty, forty crosses, real dangerous stuff. You'd have _noticed_. You'd have been tired of looking at yourselves."

"Do you foreknow anything about this, darling spouse?"

"…Stop it."

"No, really, oh guiding star of my soul, oh moon of my delight, what wonders are you keeping so entirely to yourself these days? It's not spoilers if you haven't been there yet. Do tell, love, problem shared and all that, it'll be a weight off-"

"_Stop it!_" And yes, I can feel Rory's eyes burning in through the side of my skull, Daddy Bear waking up and that's fine. He can stare all he wants. If he interrupts, well, then we'll have a problem. River knows. River knows or she would have slapped me by now. She knows more than she's saying and knows she's in the wrong not to say it. It's the big eyes, the trembling lip, all the tell-tale signs, but she's not manipulating me. I think she sees that on my face; the crocodile tears dry up before they even fall. The eyes stop glittering, the line of her mouth sets. "Ask me no questions, sweetie, and I'll tell you no lies."

"Talk about your once-in-a-lifetime offers."

"Then take me up on it."

"Not tonight, River."

Stroking my lapel, "Pretty please?"

My hand takes sharp, sudden hold of her wrist and pulls her hand away. "Look around you, _think_ for a moment of the last couple of days, if you would, and tell me if this is _really_ the time for 'pretty please'."

"Doctor?"

"Just a second, Rory, I'm trying to cure your daughter of her terrible enigmatitis."

"Well, for one, I'll thank you to take your fingernails out of your wrist and for another, we've been found."

"Frankie, your lift's here."

"No, Doctor, I don't think you-" are really in the mood to listen to me witter on about River like I don't quite grasp the gravity of what she's hiding from us. Well done, Rory, very observant.

"Jack, run and get Amy and Jessica. I'd ask Rory, but he seems content to stand glaring for now."

Not a single one of them moves. Then Rory does. That's good of him. When nobody else is doing what they should, there's the Roman, Old Faithful, stepping into all the breaches, doing his best for me even when he wonders what the hell I'm- Oh, no, that's not it at all.

He grabs me by the back of the jacket, in fact. Drags me away from River and around to the other side of the console, to the monitor.

Now that I think about it, he did punch me that time.

He pulls the monitor down in front of me. "_Now_ do you get it?"

It's not a Teselecta. The signal's completely wrong. The signals, plural, are completely wrong. The signals are little single spots on the landscape, small. Not travelling from very far away at all. There are dozens of them, and more are appearing every second.

"Nobody leaves the Tardis," I say. It is the only logical thing to say. It's a place to start. What's going to follow it is still an utter mystery.

Rory, never having been the most logical creature I've known, says at the same time, "Amy's out there."

He runs for the door.

I shout for him to stop, but he doesn't, or I don't shout in time

The first touch of the brass door handle, and Rory is flung backward from it as if from an explosion


	9. Chapter 9

The scanners show Silents. Everywhere. A yard full of scrap metal channelling a square mile's worth of streetlight electricity. It's jumping to anything it can, including the handle of the door. Jack is on the floor by Rory, taking a fast pulse. "He's alive."

Which is something, but for how long?

Quick blast of the sonic unlocks Frankie's cuffs. "Make yourself useful," I tell her, and pull the monitor around to her, "Find Amy and Jessica on that." I can't look at it. All the flashing lightning is giving me a headache. I go to meet River at the door. "How do we get out?"  
>"Well, a pair of rubber gloves would get us <em>out<em>-"

"More your area than mine, dear, where do we keep those?"

"It scares me that you didn't mean that as a kitchen sink joke, sweetie. Anyway, if you'd let me finish, just getting the door open isn't enough. We're parked on top of crushed cars; we can't go anywhere without a full rubber _suit_ and oh, please, sweetie, close your mouth again. Don't say what you're going to say."

"Yes, love."

"Like I'm not annoyed enough with you right now."

"Whatever love wants."

With Rory safely grounded away from anything metallic, Jack joins us, "So now that the domestic is over-"

"Oh please," River sighs, "You call _that_ a domestic?"

"-What's the plan?"

"Open forum!" I call to all present. "Anybody with an idea, feel free to let me take credit for it."

"How's your traction tech?" Holly shouts. With the door proving fruitless and our three stares doing surprisingly little to change that, I rush back to her at the console. Amy and Jessica, for the moment, are safe. They're on a patch of open concrete at the centre of the yard, but they have no way of getting back to us. "You could get airborne, lift Spooky and Mrs Williams out from above. It's the safest way." There's a crack like a whip, a flash of blue and the tang of ozone. It all happens behind my back, but the look on Jack and River's faces when I turn tells me all I need to know. The first spark of electricity just jumped from the door handle to the stair rail. "Safer for us too."

Oh, she's good. When she stops trying to kill us, Frankie can stay. We like Frankie. "One little problem."

"Yeah?"

"I don't have traction tech, never have had. Too easy to get it turned back on you." I'm trying to think, but River cries out, and her feet run in the direction of her father. "What is it?"

"He's arresting!"

"Can you fix it?"

"Well, _God_, I'd have to hoik him up and get a proper look, guv."

If you strip off all the unnecessary and totally inappropriate sarcasm, she's telling me she can't do it on her own. "Frankie, go and help her; arresting's a speciality of yours, isn't it? Jack!"

"Yeah?"

"Go out the door on your left, first left, second right, straight on past the bins till you get to the spiral staircase. Straight down. Find a pair of rubber gloves on the way. I need you to open the basement door and when Amy and Jessica float towards you, haul them in."

"Thought you didn't have traction?" Holly calls. The sentence takes on a strange false rhythm from her artificially pumping Rory's heart.

"I don't. I'll have to recalibrate the artificial gravity, essentially lift the space out from around the two of them."

"Sounds like kind of a lengthy process, Doctor."

"Yes, Jack, and do you know what else is a lengthy process? Finding the bottom of the Tardis, now _move_!"

River is trying to listen for breathing, so I turn off the sound from the scanners. That, and all that electrical crackle was driving me mad. And under that crackle, Amy was screaming for me, and for her husband, and neither of us can do anything for her yet. I just need them to be okay a few minutes longer. That's all it is, a few minutes. A few very quick calculations, reroute some of the power from other parts of the Tardis, it's no big deal if I get it right. Three minutes, tops.

But I've never seen so many Silents in one place.

The junkyard is bright as day and brighter, and that first spark that jumped into the Tardis jumps again, longer this time, running around the rail almost behind me. If it jumps to the console, to the rotor…

I need Amy and Jessica to be alright for a few minutes. I need _me_ to be alright for a few minutes so I can save them. But it's very hard to be alright with the monitor in the corner of my eye. They're closing in, easing down, that liquid way they move, out of the junk, over the concrete. All lit up, an uninterruptable circuit through cars and washing machines and mattress springs. And then one of them points, right at Jessica's chest.

The heart is the organ most susceptible to electric shock.

Over the deafening beating of my own, Frankie Holly is counting Rory's.

But the bolt that should destroy Jessica veers out to her left. The scar on her shoulder, the ash on the surface. This is one of those times when the ash has more in common with steel than wood. First the pain, the burn, doubles her over. Then she realizes she should be dead and figures it out. Just in time, too, because another steps forward and points directly at Amy. Jessica wraps one arm around hers, and from the other fires a stake out long, all the way down and into the concrete.

Electricity always takes the easiest route. An ash skeleton is a path of much less resistance than Amy's flesh.

"She's earthed them!" I laugh out loud. "Earthed them both! Oh, my beautiful Ghost!" Then, because good things always come in threes and I've only had the first, "River? How's your father?"

"This is hardly the time, sweetie, I've only just got Daddy breathing again!" I laugh again. _Yes_. Finally! Finally something works, something goes to plan, _finally_.

I mean, aside from that electric fence I've apparently had installed around the console.

"Frankie, River doesn't need you anymore. New task; interrupt the flow of current between the door handle and the important life-saving instruments." And me, now that everything's on the up, I am on some kind of fire, let me tell you. I even get to jettison River's trophy room to get the downward angle completely right on the gravity field. This is it. I win.

I know I thought that before and somewhat jinxed myself, but really, this time, for sure, _I win_.

One last little annoyance, just in the corner of my eye. There's a Silent approaching Jessica. With a hand on Amy and one stuck to the ground, she has none left to defend herself. Pond, bless her heart, she's standing up for them both, shouting the odds. Any other day, she could have snapped herself off a blade and done worse, but best she doesn't lay hands on any conductors right now.

The Silent gets right up close. Jessica doesn't flinch, just stares right up at it, and it reaches out to touch her. It can run no more current through her than she's already taking, but it'll burn. She knows that and trembles, but doesn't so much as blink as she waits for its touch.

Then I notice the sparks jumping from end to end of her ash scar. And they're not coming from this Silent. This one is switched off, as it were. So it doesn't burn when it touches her. In fact, it seems almost to suffer the shock.

It lifts the chain around her neck over its gnarled white fingers.

Keeperkey.

Tugs the chain and it comes free. Carries it away, retreating from them.

And that's just the last joke. That's the last and most glorious joke that there is. That's why they're here, why they did this. They came to take back what I stole back from them after they stole it from the Keeper. Which I know, and they don't, to be _entirely_ useless to anybody. That's why they're here. And they could have had me and River and everybody trapped in this box just the same way, but they came from a useless, sick little joke which only now finally becomes funny to me. Hilarious to me.

Laughing like a fool, I slide off the handbrake, slide the field generator home and listen to it powering up, a great sucking noise more potent than all the rest, than the whip-crack as the electricity from the door gets cut off in Holly's leather jacket, than Rory's first weak words of confusion as he comes too, than River crying out with joy, than _everything_ bar my own laughter because –

- Ladies and gentlemen of the perpetual jury -

I. Win.

I float the Tardis out over the concrete even as the Silents are redoubling their efforts, hoping to overload Jessica-as-lightning-rod and finish her and Amy off. A great light falls over them on the scanners, Jack throwing the bottom doors open. The gravity field takes them, turns them suddenly weightless, and prevents anything travelling through it. No more current. Jessica goes limp. Leaves her stake in the ground to run the energy off, but with her other arm she throws the feather-light Amy upward to Jack. Moments later, she kicks off the ground and follows, leaving the charged stake behind.

"Yes! _Get_ in! I make _everything_ better; that's why they call me by the name that they do! _Oh_ yes!"

Rory groans. "Take it he fixed things, then?"

River nods. "And now we'll never hear the end of it." They're having a moment, a lovely, father-daughter moment, and I'm in just the mood to witness such a moment. In my happy fug, I forget about the railing and go to lean on it. It hops me backward by a foot or so across the glass floor. That's alright, I can watch from here.

"My head hurts," Rory says, and River laughs, helping him up from the floor to a chair.

"Well, it's an improvement. You were technically dead a minute ago."

"_Again_?"

Wait. This isn't a touching father-daughter Kodak-Hallmark moment. That's actually quite a horrible thing to hear him say. Because he did just technically-die-for-a-minute again. And that really shouldn't happen.

On the other side of me, by the door, Frankie Holly is peeling the smoking ruins of her very fine leather jacket off the door handle. It's not quite so serious, but it's not nice either.

Moments later, Jack enters, somehow at a different door to the one he went out of, carrying Pond limp in his arms. From underneath her, he manages to point one accusatory, Marigolded finger at me, "I'm going to kill you. You always stick me with the jobs that hurt."

"Well, you're _immortal_, Jack. Generally those jobs hurt you less than they would most people."

He ignores me. Rory starts to get up towards Pond, but River holds him back. "She's alright," Jack says, "It's shock more than anything… No pun intended." He brings her to him. Aside from a couple of little static sparks, they both seem to be back to normal. Apart from Pond being unconscious. And Jack having burns on his wrists above the rubber gloves from pulling Jessica in. Matter of fact, where is she? I wanted to tell her she was brilliant for earthing them both.

"Jessica's staying below," Jack fills in, "Until she's okay to make contact with anything again."

Wait.

What the hell was I celebrating again?

What did I think I'd won, exactly?

Since when does just surviving constitute a victory? Oh no, no, no, there's nothing here that even _smells_ like a win. Everything smells like ozone and singed hair, not victory. There's been a massive miscalculation made somewhere along the line, and I don't know when I started to make it. When did just surviving become enough?

I leave them all to it.

If anybody needs me I'll be in the War Room.


	10. Chapter 10

Beyond that door, they're happy. It's enough for them to have survived. The Ponds have both had a scare and they're alive. Jack has his burns bandaged and he got to save the day. Jessica can give anything she wants a shock. Frankie's not in handcuffs. And that's enough for them.

It's a good long time I sit on this side of the door and just listen. Eventually, River comes and finds me.

"What's the matter, my love?"

I tell her. Everything that's been going through my head, everything that feels so ungrateful, but I can't help it. She sits opposite me and understands. Pretends she does, maybe. I don't know anymore. I haven't forgotten what we were discussing before those Silents appeared.

"We've stopped fighting, River," is how it ends.

"Don't say that, that's not true."

"It is true. We don't… We _react_. How long have we lived like this? Spinning into ambush after trap after diabolical plot. Living to fight another day; how long has that been who we are?"

"Careful, sweetie. You don't sound like yourself."

"That long?"

And she still understands, or she's still pretending, but now something is fighting with it. She's thinking of something that happened another time, somewhere else, and rather than tell me anything she gets up and paces away from me. I wish she wouldn't. I wish she'd tell me. Because I'm sick of arguing and I'm sick of not knowing, God help me to say it, what side she's on. I wish I knew her heart, tonight and any other night. Big things or little things, it doesn't matter, I wish I knew. I feel like I should know.

And I wish, above all else, that she'd stop turning her back to me.

"What exactly are you saying?" she says, before I can tell her any of this. Spins back on her heel and leans over the table. "Think very carefully, my love, about what exactly you're saying and tell me in as short a sentence as you can manage."

I do precisely as she asks. It takes a moment, and through all of it she watches me. Her eyes beg not to hear some certain phrase, but I don't know what it is, and so I can't avoid it.

"We have to take it to Kovarian's door."

"No."

"You said it yourself, River. Your exact words, the other day, when I met you at the Justice Department-"

"I know what I said, my love, but-"

"But what? But you didn't mean it? You'll forgive me if I don't quite buy that."

"I didn't _know_, I was-"

"Oh. So foreknowledge came and visited somewhere between Tura and New York, well, that narrows the field a bit."

"For God's sake, can we _drop_ that?"  
>"No! It seems very, very important, if you ask me, River. So who is it? Who's your little future source, criss-crossing timestreams, hissing in your ear, changing your mind, who are we dealing with here?"<p>

"Listen!" she snaps. "Just sit there and _listen_ for once in your _ridiculous_ life. You're talking about _actively_ pursuing war with the Silence."

I start to get up. She's not letting me go, following me step for step, but that's okay. She follows me back out the door, back towards the console room, but I don't stop talking. I have an argument to give her, and I'm giving it.

"No, dear. This isn't about _giving_ them a war. They're already fighting. We don't have a choice."

"Yes we do!

"No choice that I _like_, River."

She opens her mouth. Jack speaks before she can, raising one of his bandaged hands. "I'm in."

"Helps Doctor and Riversing."

"Us too, Doctor."

"I'll stay, if you'll have me. And I know Mun Jones'll come if you call. He thinks you're Jesus Christ."

"Don't encourage him." River glares. Suddenly surrounded by volunteers, what more can she say? She's outnumbered, five to one. River might not believe I'm right, but everybody else does.

Of course, she could always come clean. Whatever she knows about our immediate future, it's clearly putting her off. If she told me, perhaps I would agree with her, and I too would balk at this idea. But I don't know that for a fact, right now. All River has to do is tell me something honest and true, something that we both know is there and I'm going to find out eventually, so why not now?

River's not stupid, either, she knows exactly what I'm doing.

And she knows exactly what she does when she reaches out and takes my hand, in front of all our volunteer witnesses and says, "Every step of the way, sweetie."

I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking I should have listened to her. You couldn't give me a reasonable, cogent argument why, it's just a gut feeling. You feel, instinctively, that I've made a rash decision here tonight, and that no good can come of it. You, with the utmost respect of course, are aware that the Ponds have, in the past, been all too willing to follow me. You know that Jack and Frankie are both soldiers at heart, and that Jessica too was raised in an environment in which violence often made the best sense. None of them, therefore, seem to be a good gauge of how sensible my plan is. And River, on the other hand, as contentious as the whole situation may be, has foreknowledge. Therefore, listening to her is essentially the same as listening to the future. You're thinking I'm being foolish, deeply, deeply arrogant, to ignore that kind of build-up, all those signs.

And I don't blame you.

How could I?

In heaven's name, I'm thick. I'll admit that faster than anybody. I'm brilliant, yes, but I am _thick_. But I'm not that thick.

I sat alone in the War Room tonight and I have never been so aware of being at a crossroads. And only once or twice ever so aware of getting very, very close to the grand finale of something. This time, little bit of luck, that sensation won't be followed hard upon by a sudden and traumatic regeneration. But I digress.

The combination of those two particular sensations left words stuck in my head. And since I had the sonic back, I was able to play the recording of those words to myself.

You all remember Marie Laveau, don't you? There was a prediction about two more forks in the road and then no more. I don't care whether or not you remember, I do. I can't forget it, not for a second, I never have.

Now, I already went through the first fork, at the Tian Lu Quan. Went in completely the wrong direction, lost the future River, ultimately lost Jessica to it, nearly lost Rory, whole thing was a shambles. At that last fork, I turned away from River.

Last time, turning away from River was wrong.

It follows, _almost_ logically, with just enough logic to satisfy a bit of hazy, distant voodoo, that this time, turning away from River is entirely the true and proper course.

Don't get me wrong; I know it's a fallacy. But it felt right. I wasn't confused, not for a moment. It felt natural. And when she turned her back on me, when she lied and worse, refused to say a thing, I knew what I was doing.

I'm right. I know that. It's okay. I usually am.

We were the ones who gave the Silence the run of Stormcage, directly or indirectly. It's only right, only karmic, that we should be the ones to take it back off them. And I should just point out that this is nothing at all to do with getting absolute power taken back off the Lord Chief Justice so he can't get River and I executed anymore. That is a pleasant side effect, but it never crossed my mind. Until just now, obviously, when I said it.

History, cross-referenced with my list of war-dates stolen from Kovarian, implies that Stormcage was the headquarters before Demon's Run was even built. I'm not out to crush them today. Cruelty never got anybody anywhere. I am, however, out to rout them, to scatter them out across systems at all points of the compass. I want them out of house and home and shivering alone on the street corners of the universe, and Kovarian cowering inside her own empty heart. Fears me? Hates me? Not yet she doesn't.

'What have I done?' That's what I want to hear out of her. That's how I end this day happy. 'What have I done?'

Ten points extra if I get her to scream it to the heavens, but I don't think she's that melodramatic. It's days like this you could almost miss Davros. I mean, if you tried really hard and thought of something sad, like a puppy dying of leukemia, and squinted and looked at it sideways. In a dim room. With sunglasses on. And still, then, just almost. But you _could_.

The Tardis hovers, gently rotating, over the landing bay at Stormcage. Quiet, not doing anything else, close enough that you can read the sign from below, but still out of reach. Calm. Aloof. Sexy, _sexy_ old girl.

She's got confidence, has my darling blue box. She just hangs there, cool as you please. And they send up all the alarms, and all the Silents gather in a big circle around where she might land. Coming out to greet me, bless their shrivelled, black, apple core hearts. Them and their human guards, everyone who isn't essential to keeping inside Stormcage running, they all turn out to watch. Oh, the brass, the front, just calling them out to meet me. Yes, come on, lads, gather round. Load the guns, charge up your… fingers. Be ready for me.

Of course, they can do whatever they please. The Tardis is not coming down just yet. The guest of honour isn't down there yet.

It's an odd Kovarian that finally arrives. Halfway between the young, idealistic Anna and the twisted old Madame we all know and despise. Fifty percent more vicious than the former and twice as afraid to face me. Still, she comes out and stands, and I could almost respect that. Then again, I did get most severely told off for showing her respect before. I shouldn't be annoying Rory, not so soon after him being dead again.

Now that she's here, the Tardis gradually, gently sinks.

"Oh, River, I can't watch. She'll _kill_ her."

"Mum'll be fine."

"Wasn't talking about _her_!"

The Tardis lands on one corner first and sort of _drops_ onto the rest, which isn't good for the suspension, but River tells me to stop complaining and points out that I'm actually cutting off the circulation to the rest of her arm.

Oh, yes, I meant to say. River and I are already inside, in the almost-abandoned Stormcage. In fact, nearly all of us are, but River is here with me, and we're watching events unfold on her scanner.

Out on deck, the door of the Tardis inches open, and Pond sticks her little head out, laughing gently to herself.

"I did it!" she cries, with a little victory dance. "I actually _flew_ the Tardis! You all saw me! You're my witnesses. Tell everybody; Amy Pond flew the Tardis, and she was all alone and nobody was helping her!"

Kovarian _rages_, "Take her in!"

It doesn't. Amy ducks back into the Tardis and locks the door. A moment later her voice crackles over the scanner, "Are you _sure_ this door's going to hold? They sound really angry."

"Quite safe, Pond, she's withstood worse than that. Anyway, another couple of minutes they'll figure out what's going on and you'll be the least of their worries. Hang tight, Agent Braveheart."

"Ten-four, Doctor. Good luck."

"Thank you, Amelia."

River won't look at me. And she doesn't laugh at 'Agent Braveheart' either. She lets me take her hand for a moment, but she doesn't look. "All in motion now," she says.

That's all she says.


	11. Chapter 11

"Don't do this," River says. "Let's walk away from this."

"Are you giving me an argument or an order?"

"I'm saying don't do this."

Bit late for that. With most of her entourage left to guard the Tardis, Kovarian has gathered her human captains about her to take her safely to her escape ship. She could come out and face me when she thought I was doing the same, but now she's afraid. It's all going. It's all, as River said herself, in motion. "I'm sorry, my love."

She says nothing because she knows I'm not, not really. Sorry she feels that way, certainly, but not sorry about what we're doing.

With her four man escort armed and ready, you can hear Kovarian's heels all over Stormcage, echoing down around the galleries, even over the rumble of a new stellar storm gathering outside. It is a sound which does absolutely nothing for me. Scout's honour. They see her straight to the old emergency launch on the third circle. They kept it, I think, in case of prison riots or takeovers. Stormcage is isolated, cut-off; if anything ever happened, theoretically they could have fired somebody back to the Justice Department to ask for help.

Unless, of course, all the power was switched off to negate the electromanipulation abilities of a certain race of tall pale gents. Then they wouldn't have been able to do much at all.

My only consolation in that deep guilt is that Kovarian too is going absolutely nowhere. They reach the port to find Captain Francesca Holly leaning against it, holding in the safety clip of a Falklands era grenade.

"Anybody know how to get the pin back into one of these?" The lead guard, on Kovarian's left, steps forward and places the muzzle of his rifle to her temple. "At this range you'll take the both of us out, mister."

"Get out of the way, princess?"

"Okay." She steps aside. There on the airlock door is an explosive of a different kind all together, a little silver egg with two magnetic braces holding it up. "Now, you can get in and out alright, that's fine. But I wouldn't take off, if I were you. See this little guy?" So that she can point, she moves the grenade into her other hand. Even all this way away, over the scanner, I hear every other person in the hallway catch their breath. "Any major pressure change and he's liable to blow your airlock door. Seriously, though, guys, this pin? Any ideas? Oh, no, hold it, I think I've got it. I think…"

She releases the safety clip. Kovarian puts herself very, very quickly behind her captains as Frankie holds it to her ear, listening carefully.

After five seconds, when nothing happens, "Yeah, I got it." The closest thing I've ever seen to a smile flits over her face. "The Doctor respectfully requests that you join him in Bracewell's former office. It was the only place he could remember how to get to."

Not strictly true. I could get to Cell Forty-Six in my _sleep_. I'm just not sure if River's been here or not yet, so it would have been hit and miss for symbolic significance.

"You want me to kill her?" asks that first and bravest of the captains, still poised to shoot Holly.

She looks up at him and pulls the pin back out of the grenade. "Or you could go see the Doctor, huh?"

I swear to you, here and now, I will never ever tire of watching Kovarian _steel_ herself. The way she prepares for me, puts all her personal fear and apprehension away in a cupboard somewhere and becomes cold. At this point in her life, she's still just pretending, but she'll get used to it. It'll become natural to her. Someday soon she'll just stay cold and it'll be more than she deserves.

She makes a point of saying, in front of Frankie, "To _my_ office, then."

I suspected as much. The space is very much cooler and cleaner than it was as Bracewell's. There are files instead of books, and no clutter, no photographs, no executive desk toys. There's a waste-basket with nothing in it and a gun mounted under the desk. Where there used to be a false projector window showing the Lake District of Old Earth, there's just a blank wall. No pretence, no illusion. No hope.

Still, River lingers over there, as though if she only looks _hard_ enough…

"What's the matter, River?"

"Walk away."

"Stop saying that."

"It's not too late, my love, we can be gone before she gets here. Call it all off and just _go_."

"Why?" I reach out, take her by the wrist and pull her over to me. "Why, River? Give me one good reason. You must have _dozens_, it's all over your face, but just give me one. One precious gem out of the whole future that some kindly creature must have spread out before you. Just the one. Why have we been criss-crossing timestreams and I'm not even aware of it? Convince me, River, don't just tell me."

"You never learn. We don't lie to you, Doctor, none of us do." She breaks off because I'm laughing, "Not even me. We don't lie to you. Walk away."

"_Convince me_!"

"I'll _kill _you!" It's sudden, a break. A weight she couldn't bear up anymore. That's what she's known all this time, and it hurts her just as much to let it go as it did to hold it back.

"Pardon? Couldn't hear you over all the déjà vu, love."

"Walk away, or I'll kill you."

"You too? Now you, I could believe it of. You? Yes. Maybe."

I turn my chair back towards Bracewell's desk. River says no more. Paces once or twice, and for a moment, somewhere in the midst of it all, there's a damp, ragged edge to her breathing, but that doesn't last. It's not going to get her anywhere. The crocodile tears never are a good idea.

Anyway, it really is too late now. They're nearly here now. And River knows that, no matter how she might be feeling or what's going through her mind, she's going to have to be strong for this bit.

Down the hall from the office, the entourage suddenly stops. It's the first and bravest of the captains again. He stops, and with a few deft steps, puts himself and his rifle between Kovarian and the other guards.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he says. "I wasn't sure until just now, so I couldn't say anything. But one of these guys is an imposter."

"I beg your pardon?" she balks.

That's me. Right in her inner circle at the drop of a hat, and her none the wiser. The Captain goes on, "He's been planting explosives everywhere we go, and I can't think why else he'd be doing that except on behalf of that damn Doctor, ma'am. You go on and stall him. I'll finish up here and start clearing the bombs."

Oh no. They're onto me, and my wicked plan. Gasp. Shock-horror. Egad.

Kovarian, breathless at having had such a close call, and with a gratitude I'll probably never see again; "Thank you, Captain… I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

"Harkness. And it's my pleasure. Good luck in there, Madame Kovarian."

Again, before she can tear her eyes off him and run off to meet little old me, "Thank you…"

"Arrogant sod," I mutter, "How _does_ he do it?"

River, bitterly, "Oh, don't worry, you're well on your way." I swivel my chair just enough to look up at her. Heels in the hallway, just enough time. One last exchange, you and I, dear. Convince me. One way or the other, River, convince me. She leans down, one hand on either arm. Close enough to be warm and to whisper, "There are _limits_, my love."

Close enough for me to turn her cheek fast and hard against my lips and tell her, "Only for the limited, _sweetie_."


	12. Chapter 12

Kovarian charges in, with the brass to look rather put out. I let go of River very quickly and spin back my chair.

"It's customary to knock," I tell her.

"Not at the door of one's own office."  
>"Not yours, though, you stole it. Have a seat."<p>

"I will, thank you. I'll have the bottle and glasses from the second drawer, too." I open the drawer and assess that request.

"No, that was Bracewell's too. What did you do with him, by the way?"

She shrugs, "He's about somewhere. Forget quite where I put him. Don't worry, Doctor, I'm sure somebody feeds him."

How far she's come. Why, just yesterday morning she looked at me as though we were worthy of each other, as though fear could still manifest as respect and not turn automatically to hate. And now she's got that snake smile on again, that cover-up. She isn't ready for me, and hasn't the warrior heart that let her say it at Tunguska. That's gone, by this stage. We could have been such good enemies, once upon a time.

Thinking of it all, I can't help but smile, and can't help but ask her, "Are you ready for me yet, Anna?"

Her own name jolts her. Jessica used to look at me the same way. A split-second of blank before, 'oh, that means me'. And the name triggers the memory and there's a waver that no pinched expression, no power suit in the world is ever going to hide. "We've been ready for a long, long time." Lies. Cover-up. It couldn't be thirty years older since Siberia. She doesn't even know what a long time is. "You do know I could have you swamped like _that_?" she says, and snaps her fingers. "They're all watching you precious box at the moment, but when I call-"

"They'll come running, Madame Kovarian, yes, I _had_ noticed."

"There _are_ rather a lot of them."

I hold up River's scanner, "I see them."

"I only feel the need to point this out because, in spite of it all, you're still here."

"Call them," I say. From Bracewell's desk, I pick up the tannoy microphone and throw it to her. She's not expecting it, the force and the impact shocking her, and it doesn't do my hearts good in any way to see her jump. Scout's. Honour. "Summon down the Silent Hoards upon our _relatively_ defenceless heads. Frankie'll take a couple with her, with that grenade, and River here, I _know_ River will make quite a dent, won't you darling?"

"Oh," she mutters, "They'll never take me alive." If there was time, I'd worry about her. She's hardly spoken and she's not enjoying this like she should be. There wasn't nearly enough revelling in her response just now.

"Call them," I reiterate. Kovarian holds the microphone like it's something rare and dangerous she's never seen before, doesn't move, doesn't do anything. So I hop out of my chair, onto the edge of the desk and inch across to her side. I grab both of her hands and guide them into the proper grip. "You pressy down on _this_ button, and talky into this fuzzy bit at the top, alright? Call them."

She glares, snatches her hands out of mine. It's funny; now that I know it's there, I can see the fear all over her. I bet if Jessica was here, she could smell it. I can practically smell it myself. Acrid and metal and bloody. I am a wound; her fear of me cuts her open. Eventually she takes up the microphone and curls away into her chair.

River sees what she's at before I do. Before Kovarian can draw the gun from inside her suit, River has it off her. I hold out a hand, but she doesn't pass it to me. She puts it on the bookshelves, in front of the files, up at head height, like we're two children she doesn't quite trust.

And now that sneak attack has failed her, Kovarian relents. Makes a general announcement for all available personnel to prepare for the apprehension and destruction of my fair self, so on, so forth, where to find me. The moment she's done, I snatch the microphone back from her and add;

"Oh, by all means, my pasty-skinned friends, come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. But I've always thought you looked a bit squishy. And be aware, oh, please do be aware, that you will be _met_. Not least in the fact that the Eighth circle will, by now, have been rigged with enough explosive force to detach it entirely from the rest of the station. I wouldn't stand on the galleries."

"You're bluffing," Kovarian tells me. _Tells_ me. I'm so glad she took that tone. So glad. It just makes it all the more satisfying to pick up the scanner and show her Rory, waving up at the cameras, pointing at little sonic eggs on either side of him. "Then you're mad," she breathes. "You'll be destroyed too."

Mmh. Sucked out like a spider up a hoover when the vacuum gets in. Detaching the eighth circle would essentially be like blowing a giant airlock. Vacuums are great; the pressure crushes your lungs and the water boils off your eyes. I knew she was going to say that. I had a really witty answer planned, but I forget it. At the one particular moment when I could say that really witty thing, I'm only half here – fading in and out with an itch at the back of my head. Psychic paper again. Bloody psychic paper never bloody stops. This is why I don't answer the phone, you know. Well, whatever it is, they can deal with it themselves. I'm in the middle of something here.

"Well, you were there, Kovarian," I say, eventually, "You know what the old deathwish is like. Hard habit to shake." It's not my original really witty thing, but it'll do. "Just out of interest, how did you get over yours?"

"My _what_?" she spits. Like it's a game and she's tired of it. For one, that was a genuine question and for another she can join the bloody Tired Club, but not until I'm finished with her.

"Deathwish. Only you used to be a bit of a fighter. And now you're more of a… River?"

"Vicious hag?"

"Mmh, yes, that'll do, I like that o-"

"Bitter old vigilante gone to seed?"

"Yes, River, that's fine too, dear, now-"

"A general?"

I look round at her, but she stares only at Kovarian. Maybe she doesn't realize what she's said. …Yes, and maybe she's not River at all, and a race of superevolved dandelions have stolen my wife to be their leader…

Now I have to pull this, and my composure, back. I need something good and insulting and come up with, "When exactly did you stop remembering the names and faces of your lieutenants, Madame Kovarian?"

Her face _lights_. Suddenly I know where she's taking this and it's going to be wonderful. "Oh, not all of them, Doctor. I might not be able to call an army down on you, but all it takes is one, isn't that right? And there's one out there now who saw it all and knew and-"

"And what's his name, then, this imaginary protector and defender of yours?"

"Captain Harkness."  
>I laugh only very softly at first. Waiting for a bit of back-up, but it's not forthcoming. I have to twist back towards River again. She's still standing there, too busy being petty with me to appreciate the sheer hilarity right under her nose. "Oh, come on," I say, and that's enough to trigger her. In moments, we're both lost in a rather childish and embarrassing fit of giggles. Kovarian won't even ask what's so funny. And she's leaning now, forward in her seat. Contemplating either a grab for the gun, which is ill-advised, or a bolt for the door, which is also ill-advised.<p>

I think she knows, even before I perch on the arm of her chair and put the scanner under her nose. Over the tannoy, "Captain Harkness? If Captain Harkness could just give us a wave, please?" Without taking his eye off the other three captains he grins and waves. Really rather vigilant of him, and a bit unnecessary now that they're all cuffed together, back to back. I let go of the microphone and say privately, "Mine, I'm afraid. And rather easy to slip in, I must say." Back to the tannoy, "Jack, nip down and see what's keeping Jessica."

He salutes and goes, but I miss any response he might give. At the mention of Jessica's name, Kovarian snapped to attention. "Oh, yes," I tell her, "I get that one off you too. Where are you on her, by the way? Just give it to me in dead Time Lords, I'll work it out from there. And while we're on the subject, Anna Kovarian, that was not wise. That was not wise at all, to _pick off _my people. Even if I didn't know they were there, that's rather beside the point. The point is, that was _not wise_, now say it back to me, if you would, so that I'll know you understand. What was that action?"

Only when River pulls me away do I realize how close I'd gotten. Leaning over her, both hands on her chair. She could have bitten my throat out if she'd only thought to close her teeth. I could have bitten out hers. River hauls me back by the jacket and it's a bit of a shock. It's only the leftovers of a snarl that trigger her to warn me, so sternly, "I won't let you regret this anymore than you're already going to."

"Just tell me _why_." After I've already said it, I decide I wasn't addressing her, but Kovarian, and turn back to her. "Why all the rest, why not come directly for me? Because I'll tell you a secret, if it wasn't her killing all the rest I would never have gotten the control over Jessica that I did. Why? To get to me? Out of fear? Because I swear to you, you don't know yet what fear even is."

She smirks, rolls her eyes. "Oh, please." To River, "How do you _stick_ him? It's all me-me-me…"

"That's it, Anna, bluff it off-"

"We weren't after you, we could have had you anytime we pleased. We were after the Key. All we had to do was get it before you and you didn't even know it existed."

"What? This key? Walking in the door with Speak-Of-The-Devil?"

"Am being Ghost, not devil."

River's got her compassionate face on. If she goes to Jessica first, she'll take the key off her and send her away again. I bound up from the desk and get her under my arm. "Of course you are, Little Ghost, figure of speech. Come and say hello to Owner. It's okay, she won't bite, I tested."

Without a hint of either ire or irony, her little head on one side, Jessica greets Kovarian.

"Have you ever seen this face?" I say, holding Jessica in front of her. "It's lovely when it's not covered in sores, but these things will happen when you have a mask locked onto your face. Don't ever lock her in, Madame Kovarian, neither of us will take kindly to it, will we, Jessica?"

Jessica doesn't reply, right away. She looks me over, blinking. Same way River did. Honestly, what's the matter with them all? All Jessica does is hold up the Keeper's infokey to me. "Brings it. Captainjack am saying took too long. Cryptigerfy room am too far away."

"'Cryptography', Jessica, but it's good that you're trying."

I can't be bothered with the rest. Things I should say, things I shouldn't, things I wanted to say and thing I haven't said, can't be bothered. Enough talk.

Nearly enough talk.

"This is what you fought for. This is what you chased _so_ hard, what you would have _killed_ her and Amy for last night. And I'd like you to see now just what exactly is on it."

Using the scanner, using the data from the last decryption from the sonic, I can make the Keeperkey open up and play. It's not quite such a terribly twisted joke, this time. It hurts, yes, but it takes the sting away when I can watch Kovarian's face.

Somewhere in the middle, I fade, just a touch. _Bloody_ psychic paper again, reiterating itself, reminding me I've Got Mail. Shake it off, fight it down. This isn't the time. I need to get back to the world. I want to see Kovarian's expression when the Keeper leans in to camera and says,

"We know what you are, Anna Kovarian. And you will not win."

She shakes. Blanches to white and trembles. I know what she's feeling. Rage and loss. It's not disappointment. Disappointment is what happens when you don't get what you wanted for your birthday or when they move your favourite program and you miss it. Disappointment is when there are no Jammie Dodgers left in the cupboard. This? This is destruction.

She clears her throat and straightens, "You stole it too. Disappointed, Doctor?" Determined to share out the feeling, spread it around so it doesn't hurt so much. No dice. I already suffered. I have. Heaven knows I've suffered, and I'm finished with it.

"Not half as disappointed as you must be. You heard the woman; you will not win. Not anymore. And for what you've done to me, Kovarian, there will be retribution. I win now. Do you hear me? Me. I win now."

"I win at the Question, when there's no answer to give. I win at River, when you take her away and I get her back, forever. I win at Jessica, when you build her to kill me and she stands here at my side. You raised them to love nothing, to be cold and hard and incapable, until they couldn't even love the one that made them. Distinct lack of Stolkholm Syndrome, those two. Silly plan, to build weapons with no loyalty to you. It's no better then than any other gun or grenade, that can be taken from you and used against you. Your weapons, your soldiers, Kovarian, have to _love_ you."

"Like yours?"

And that makes stalemate. That makes a moment between us where there's nothing else to say, where we both might simply kill or die without another word.

"River, Jessica? Give us a minute, would you?"

"No."

"River, just _go_."

Jessica. Jessica still trusts me. Jessica takes her by the elbow and helps to pull her out. "Am to be waiting at door, Riversing and Jessica. In case him am needing them." Dear sweet Jessica. Jessica thinks _River_ still trusts me, that she doesn't want to leave me in case something happens to _me_. She's got a lot to learn, that girl, but I'm grateful.

Another falter, another itch. "River, wait!" In the doorway she stops, turns with a look of _great_ relief. He's come to his senses, she thinks, and she's heartbroken when all I do is throw her the psychic paper. "Hold onto that, would you? It's driving me mad. See what they want."

She nods and leaves. Doesn't even open it, which is a bit petty. Someone could be in trouble and it's nothing to do with how she feels about me right now. Just puts it away in her pocket, then tries to walk away. I have to shout after her to close the door.

"I'd ask if she was born in a barn, but we both know where she was born. What were you going to say about my soldiers, Madame Kovarian."

"Oh, I was all done with them. Let's talk about the General."

"Ah, but that's not my name. That's not the Answer to the Question, Trenzalore, all that guff Dorium went on about."

"I should give a toss. That never was _my_ question, you know. That's a scene from later on, a thing that's going to happen, certainly, but that was never what _I_ intended to ask of you, Doctor."

"Well, Madame Kovarian, now that we're all alone…"

"The question was never who _are_ you." She changes, twists up. The first sighting of what might be a pure emotion, rage untouched by convention or calm. A glimpse of the old warrior Anna still burning. "It's 'Who the hell do you _think_ you are?'"

Oh, that's it.

That's beautiful.

That's a much more agreeable question indeed.

In terms of simple, blind rage, I can meet her head on. Who the hell am I? I'm the last of my kind, because of me and because of her. I'm collecting up the spirits she's broken in her relentless, sociopathic quest to destroy me and putting them back together. I'm the one pointing out to her that the race she is purportedly avenging is safe and well.

I'm the one wondering why River is opening that door again.

"Who am I? Who the hell am I? I told you already, Kovarian, _I win!_ I live. I survive. I'm- "

Falling.

Not the psychic.

No, the psychic paper is in the doorway, with River holding it open. And I, in a moment, from the height of my hate, have fallen to my knees. Everything was dark for a moment, but it's better now. I'm fine now. I'll be fine now and just get up.

I haul up against the edge of the desk, try to ignore the fact that Kovarian's laughing, that the itch in my head is stronger now, and darker, that the dark rises and falls every time I blink. That something is very deeply wrong, and has been all this time.

River saying, "I'm sorry, my love."

And the message that had burned on the psychic paper, had lingered so long in the back of my mind isn't a message at all, but a joke.

_Knock Knock_, it says. A little voice I only just recognize joins in.

Who's there?

_Spell_.

Spell who?

_Okay_, it laughs, _W – H – O!_

As I sink again, as it wheedles in and takes over, I lose sight of the world around me, and Soul cackles.

The last thing it says as a guest, the last thing I hear with my own ears, "I'm going to kill you, you know."

The last thing I say of my own volition, the last thing I'll remember saying, "I know."


	13. In Which I Add An Epilogue By Soul

Ladies and gentlemen, I have got _limbs_.

Seriously.

I don't know if you've noticed this, but I have got _limbs_. I mean, not just limbs like I always get, like limbs that come with the shell, but my God, my sweet baby Jesus, great big eternal, bugger-off _limbs_! Look at them! They go on forever! I'm scared to walk lest one of them snaps and I fall on it and get speared up the middle. If I stick my arms out I can't see the ends of the bloody things.

I have two hearts too. To hell with that, done that before, got those off Madame Song. It's a good beat, but you can't dance to it. But the _arms_! The _legs_! The limbs!

I really can't stress this enough.

Just going to lean on this desk a minute. I feel like a high giraffe, looking down, wondering how the hell I'm still on my spindly little _limbs_. That happened, by the way. I was in a high giraffe once. Well, No, I was in a giraffe and I was wondering what it would be like if… Never mind. Different story, different time.

That's how this mind works. I'll get the hang of it eventually but for now it's a bit like swinging through a forest. If you stop grabbing hold of the next idea you're just going to plummet forever into the deep, dark ridiculous pit below.

But there's one really good branch I keep coming back to.

I am currently the last of his species.

I could top myself right now and call it genocide.

And I know everything.

This is power, finally, and I love it. This is what I've worked for, built myself up for, this is the life I should have had from the beginning and the life that he denied me.

Kovarian's sitting in front of me. I knew she was there but I was a bit busy trying to get him to read the joke. That was the _point_. There's a moment that occurs at only three times in human behaviour, at which the mind goes entirely blank. Which, for me, is a bit like leaving all the doors and windows open and all your valuables just inside where I can reach. Those three points are the very top of hysterical laughter, absolute blind rage and… a third one, which I'm glad I didn't have to wait for and this shell has got _such_ a blush reflex I'm not even going into it.

Now, I was going for _hysteria._ I wasn't going to do anything cruel and provoke him to rage. _I_ was getting very annoyed that the joke wasn't going to work. The moment of pure anger was all his own idea. I just hopped in when the opportunity presented itself.

Kovarian looks up, realizes I'm here and says, "And there I was thinking you were the biggest liability I'd ever allowed into my organization. But you've saved me."

"Yeah," I say, slowly, honestly, "_Total _accident."

"I beg your pardon?"

"He was here, you were here." I shrug. Weird shrug. The shoulders kind of wriggle. It's the weight of all that _arm_ hanging down below them. "But hey, you're happy, I'm happy. Laters, Mrs K."

Oh, I have to stop talking like me. That sounds _so_ wrong in this shell. I have to get, like, posh or something…

Song is still standing in the doorway. Just staring, lost. She knew this was coming. This shell knew there was something wrong, and _she_ knew I was here. Fair play to her. She's not a bad shell, you know. I've had better, but I've had worse.

Oh, my god, speak of the devil, there's worse standing behind her. Am not likes being Jessica Apple. All things are bad and confusing when am being Jessica Apple.

As shells go, if it turns out I can walk, I've still got the best one in the room. So I lock eyes on Doctor Song and focus on putting one foot in front of the other. This shell knows the secret to how it balances, all I have to do is let it do its thing. I'll just give him back his body for a second, sit back and watch how he does it.

When I step back, settle myself in the little nook between the medulla oblongata and the brain stem, he not only walks, but he runs. Runs up to Song and holds onto her. "River!" he says, "River, it's Soul! It's in, there's nothing I can do about it. You have to take the Tardis and get away from here!" And then I jump back in, on the same beat, "And River?"

She, all teary-eyed, which is a fresh thing to me, reaches up, puts her hand on his cheek. Which reminds me, haven't had a beard in a while. Must grow a beard while I'm in here.

She says, "Yes, my love?"

I say, "You have no idea how much he wants you to just _shut up_ sometimes." And just so I can get used to my new upper limbs as well as lower, I practice coiling all those fingers up inside the palm and swinging it up and my _Christ_, he punches like a girl. And Doctor Song doesn't and this shell can't duck. Well, it can, and in fairness to her, the only reason she gets him on the jaw is because I try to duck. Now I'm annoyed, and I learn very well how to use that arm when I have her by the throat.

Behind me, Jessica Apple grows down a sharp, sudden pair of stakes.

Which reminds me to laugh.

I lean close, close this shell's teeth on Song's earlobe and mutter to her, "You can have that one for free. Soon you'll be dead." The tip of a stake presses my back. I raise up these hands, but the teeth are the last to let go. "Easy, Jessica, I'm going. I've got stuff to do. Stars to align. Ducks to coax gently into a row."

Once, that is, I've figured out my walking.

[A/N To Be Concluded. Sharp eyes for 'Come The Hour', if you're still here and still coming with me.]


	14. Deus Ex Arca Archa Caeruleus

[A/N - Part bonus-feature, part response to a couple of pretty uncomplimentary PMs about Jack and Jessica's most-opportune appearance (Would you rather they hadn't shown up, Mr Gunn?). I don't feel like I'm overly fond of the Deus Ex Machina myself, but, just for your information, those two did _anything_ but just fall out of the sky. Enjoy - Sal.]

Jessica was in the middle of the second month. She'd stopped tallying the days because the marks looked too much like how the Doctor and the Ponds counted up Tall People and made her miss them. But more than five weeks. And because she still talked out loud and still wouldn't do what they said, they still took her down to be punished everyday.

Finally, that one night, in the middle of the second month, she woke back in her room and it was time to go.

Riversing had put the transmat disc around her neck. She shot out a scrap of stake and picked the lock on the door. Was going back, finally, back away from the White Place and Owner, back to the Doctor, to help him, like Riversing said.

One problem; no _idea_ where to look for the Tardis.

* * *

><p>Jack was in the middle of the second bottle. He thought. Not sure, really, could have been the third, or it could have been the first and last night just wasn't long enough ago. It was definitely a bar, though, and he was proud of himself for knowing that much. Later on, he wouldn't know that much. That was the plan anyway.<p>

Well, what else did he have on? You couldn't blame him, really, could you?

Wait…

Could you?

One thing the Doctor never warned him about; years, apparently, get longer the more you live through them.

* * *

><p>She didn't like the place where the transmat disc took her. The skulls kept trying to eat her feet. She ended up with six of them stacked up on either stake from having to stab them. Only skulls, not really alive. The Doctor wouldn't shout at her for that. Everything was strange here, and dark. Smelled funny, like dead things and old things and stones.<p>

"Hello? Am looking for Doctor box? Riversing sends her?"

Down a tunnel on the left, a low, muffled groan, "Oh, not you!" She followed the sound. There were boxes in the room, standing up on pillars. One of them moaned, "Are you still there? I'm in the middle."

She eased back the front panel and yelped. "Am being head. Am being blue man head in box."

"Oh, and it's not a raw wound at all, go ahead and pour salt in it."

She didn't understand it. Eventually he told her about Captainjack.

* * *

><p>Another thing the Doctor never warned him about; having strange girls show up to beg for your help <em>can<em> actually get boring.

"I can't help you, princess."

"Can, though. Am all over him face, smell. Captainjack am bad liar."

"…I beg your pardon?"

"Comes with her now."

"What's in it for me?"

"But why not helps her because her am _asks_ him to help her?"

Jesus, she really _must_ hang out with the Doctor.

Because, no offence, honey, but he couldn't listen to that _shattered_ English halfway across the universe. Because the last time he went looking for the Doctor he ended up spending a hundred years in Cardiff. Because he wanted another drink first, because he was too tired, because he was not in the mood. Because that sounded like a real good guy thing to do and he didn't feel that much like a good guy.

But because she sprung what would appear to be a sword from what would appear to be nowhere and stuck the point under his jaw, he figured, "What the hell."

* * *

><p>"Your arms?"<p>

"Yes."

"They come out of your _arms_?"

She looked at him. She'd already said 'yes', what else did he want?

"…Those are the only reason I'm not running right now."

"Runs. Them am to be breaking off, her throws them behind."

"Skinny little hardass."

"_Where finds Doctor, though?_ Then him am to be going back to smelly bar-place, _her_ not cares."

* * *

><p>"Am secretary being important for finding Doctor?"<p>

"Yes, Jessica. The secretary is deeply important. But she'll be scared of your mask, so you wait over there, and I'll talk to her. And if you see us leave together and go through that door at the back, that just means we need to talk in private, about how you can find the Doctor, okay?"

"Am not being so hard to help her, Captainjack."

"Oh, we'll see about that."

* * *

><p>"You know what, little girl? You <em>suck<em> at kidnapping. You couldn't keep me here if I really, really wanted to-"

She punched him. Well, she had to. The Doctor wouldn't shout at her for that. By the time he came round she'd had time to find a length of rope and get it around his wrists. Had to take his vortex manipulator off to do that, of course, but she was keeping it safe. On her own arm. Just in case.

"You're insane," he groaned, as he blinked off unconsciousness.

"Him am not says that; her am just serious needing to get back."

"You're insane and learn pronouns!"

* * *

><p>Neither of them entirely sure how it happened, they had their backs to the wall, both of them armed, surrounded intergalactic couriers of the sort descended directly from the truckers of Old Earth, each of them swinging his great, great grandfather's motorcycle chain.<p>

Jack gasped, jumped, when a hard, pointed elbow jabbed suddenly into his ribs. "_Them_, not me, Jessica!"

"Him am _dangerous_ guide! Not hangs out aftertimes."

"Can't wait, princess…"

* * *

><p>"What do you <em>mean<em> he's married?"

"Married with Riversing. Not knows; was before him am meeting Jessica."

"And she… I mean was she… _pregnant_ or anything?"

"No. But Amypond was. But Amypond am being mother Riversing, but met Riversing first. And him am not father Riversing, that am to have been being Roryperson."

"And Roryperson's the Roman guy?"

"…Captainjack am even _knowing_ Doctor?"

"Hey! He changes it up pretty regular, okay? He'll trade you in someday too, sweetheart, it's what he does. You want my two cents? You take this chance and run. At least that way he might wonder about you sometimes."

"Doctor am wonders about Jessica now. Her am goes back to help him have wartimes."

"…Wait, what war?"

* * *

><p>"Don't you ever sleep?"<p>

"Him am to be running away if her am to be falling asleep. Am being tired, not stupid."

* * *

><p>She screamed, and he clapped a hand over her mouth to stop her. Laid down his tools and raised his hands to show he meant no harm. Jessica stopped screaming, sat up and in a single, sweeping movement, kicked the tools out of reach and Jack in the stomach.<p>

"I'm only trying to help."

"With holding chiselandhammer at her head when her am… not sleeps… Close-eyes?"

"I wanted to take the mask off." She stopped fighting then, helped him back up. "They weren't much thinking of you when they locked that on, were they?"

"What am mean that? Thinking _only_ of Jessica. Little Ghost am not having face. Jessica am not being Little Ghost again while still having Jessicaface."

* * *

><p>"If I didn't know better, Jessica? I'd say these brute animals that can't possibly know who you are had some kind of grudge against you…"<p>

"Maybe am being brothers of these ones." She lifted up her wrist, and he saw there a little bracelet of buffed ivory alligator teeth, knotted in dark string. "Captainjack not worries. When Amypond am having jellyry, am always having bits that look like each other."

"It's 'jewellery'."

"Joolyree."

"'Jewellery'."

"Julie-"

"Y'know what? Let's do this after the alligators."

* * *

><p>Even though he was technically being her hostage, she was ashamed. She kept her hood up and tightened around the mask, hoping he wouldn't see. But it itched and it felt bad on her neck, and sometimes she had to take her hood down to tie it better, and he'd see. And eventually, in a way that made her blush, he said, "Okay, seriously, little girl, why the <em>hell<em> don't you just _wash_ your hair?"

"…Not does."

"Not does _why_?"

"…Hurts."

"Gimme a break, you don't honestly expect me to-"

"_Hurts_! Gets water in her maskface and _hurts_."

"Oh." Quiet and contrite, with a terrible image in mind of what her skin must look like underneath, "Yeah, I guess that would be kind of uncomfortable…"

It took him the better part of an hour. Avoiding the edges of the mask, drawing out greasy hanks around the sealed brackets. Strand by strand, he carefully brought her up shining. Because of the alligators, he told himself. He hadn't forgiven her for kidnapping him, but she was as good as her word when it came to the alligators. Captainjack absolutely did not worry about them.

She pinched herself all through it, and for the longest time he couldn't figure out why. Later, it would be obvious to him; if tap water stuck under the mask gave her pain, salt water must have been ten times worse.

* * *

><p>From around the corner, he pointed out the quiet little house. "Listen, that's where she lives. She'll still have access to all the Torchwood stuff. Tell her what you're looking for, tell her I sent you. This is how we pick a place to go find the Doctor, okay?"<p>

"Okay, but… Why am Captainjack not goes there?"

"You're so lazy. Didn't I wash your hair for you? You _owe_ me, princess."

"No, fine, does. But Captainjack am knowing Torch-lady, so-"

She made it sound so simple. And deep down, probably it was. Just go over there and talk to her. No problem, not really, not with everybody still friends. Jessica made it sound easy. So he told her, a little more forceful this time, to just go and do it, and she went.

She was, he thought to himself, like a kid. Everything was easy for her. Black and white, good and bad, easy and hard. Fighting alligators was hard. Going to talk to Torch-lady was easy. He didn't envy the Doctor, saddled with one who has so much to learn.

* * *

><p>"Jessica?"<p>

"Yes?"

"Tell me this isn't real. Tell me I'm not trekking across Siberia with a crazy girl who only just learned to refer to herself as female looking for the goddamn box again. Tell me I'm drunk in a ditch somewhere."

"…Doctor am not liking her to tells lies."

"You really are devoted, aren't you?"

"What am 'devoted' being?"

"Means it wouldn't matter what you had to do, where you had to go, how many alligators you had to fight, you'd claw your way back to him."

"Yes. Am being devoted for Doctor."

* * *

><p>"You must be Amypond. Captain Jack Harkness-"<p>

Rory forgot on a fingersnap that he was hugging Jessica and rose up tall. "It's Williams, actually. _Mrs_ Williams, and I would be Mr. Formerly Centurion and also Captain, _Captain_ Rory Williams, husband of Amy Pon-_Williams_."

"Rory, is this really the time? They've been arrested, there's going to be a _massive_ explosion in about ten minutes, potential help knocks on the door and you're going to get all upset over an introduction?"

"…It was a decidedly untrustworthy introduction."

"Roryperson am to be trusting Captainjack. Jessica am does."

He looked down at her then. The chisel-marks on the bars that held the mask all but hidden by her hair. For the first time since the whole saga began, thinking to himself, yeah, maybe he was to be trusting her too.

And hell, what else did he have on?

"Sorry, did somebody say the words 'arrested' and 'massive explosion'?"


End file.
